


Searching for the Ghost

by hollycomb



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 77,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/pseuds/hollycomb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sulu is a Navy translator sent to Japan in September 1945 as part of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. Chekov and Scotty are physicists, Spock is a behavioral psychologist who is accompanied by his protégé Uhura, McCoy is a Navy doctor, and Jim is a Lieutenant Commander.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Hikaru falls asleep on the plane and dreams about his family. In his dream they move away while he's out of the country and never write to tell him where they've gone. He told them about his assignment only two days before; it was cowardly, but he didn't want his last weeks with them to be unpleasant, or at least more unpleasant than usual. At the dinner table, his father shook his head and got quiet in the way that he always does when he's especially angry, then he asked Hikaru a lot of questions about what he would be doing and why he felt that he needed to do anything at all. Hikaru's youngest sister cried, afraid that he would be killed, and his middle sister shouted at her, calling her stupid, because the war is over. His oldest sister, his twin, looked at him with knowing disdain and asked him what he thinks he has to prove.

His mother said nothing. She folded and refolded her napkin, and when the others had gone, Hikaru stood waiting for her reaction. Finally, she rose from her chair and crossed the room to slap him.

He wakes up with a start, feeling it again on his cheek. His dream retreats the way his mother did, soundless and quickly far away, into the dark of another room. He sits up, rubbing his face, and looks across the aisle to see the Russian staring at him.

The Russian, like the rest of the motley crew Hikaru was very briefly introduced to on the tarmac while the plane's engines whirred to life, is strange. He looks maybe fifteen years old, so he's got to be some kind of genius, because they called him a scientist. Hikaru forgets his name. Paul? He's got eyes like windows on daylight and he's still staring at Hikaru as if he's lost in thought.

"You fell asleep," the Russian says. Hikaru raises his eyebrows with what he hopes is obvious annoyance and turns to look out the window.

"Yeah," he mutters. Still no land below, only ocean. Behind him, he can hear the hick Naval officer snoring. Jim. He's just like everyone Hikaru served with in the Navy, even the intelligence officers who thought they were running the show. They were all named something like 'Jim.'

Closer to the front of the plane are the Germans, a frighteningly stoic psychologist named Spock and his frighteningly stoic assistant, Uhura. They aren't Germans like the ones who surrendered in the spring, they're the intellectual, misfit sort of Germans who got the hell out of Dodge as soon as they could. Hikaru looks again at the Russian, who is also an intellectual and a misfit. Hikaru is just a misfit, except that speaking Japanese makes him intellectual enough to sit among this crowd.

There are two middle-aged men up front, drinking heavily and muttering to each other seriously. They're both doctors, one some sort of physics expert and the other a Navy doctor, sent to make notes on the physical side of the Japanese suffering. Dr. Scott and Dr. McCoy. Hikaru can't remember which is which, but he wishes he were sitting with them, drinking with them.

Next to the Russian is the man in charge, Admiral Pike. Hikaru has no clue why the military side of this mission fell to the Navy, but he volunteered as soon as he heard about it. It was like looking over the edge of a skyscraper and knowing he should jump. He understands now how that must feel. It's not a decision so much as a realization: Down there is where I need to be.

They land at sunset, and as they approach the runway Hikaru is not the only one with his face pressed to the window. They've all been eager, in a sick way, to see it for themselves. Even from so high above it all, there's a kind of cloud hanging over the country. A haze. Hikaru has never been to Japan before, but his parents met and married here and as a child he was forced to write regular letters to his grandparents, who still live in Sapporo and Tomakomai. Hikaru is supposed to try to visit them, but he knows he won't have the opportunity, and he's secretly glad. They would hate him, in this uniform. His parents left Japan for California when his mother was pregnant with Hikaru and his twin sister. His sister once told him that in Japan twins are considered bad luck at best and a bestial phenomenon at worst. He's not sure if this is true. His sister was always trying to scare him when they were young.

He hopes he can stop thinking about all of it while he's here: the long past. He feels so old already; the camp at Manzanar and his the tunnel vision of his enlistment were a thousand years ago. It's not that he's changed much since then, though he pretends that he has. It's just that the days have been so long, every one of them.

They land in Tokyo and disembark, everyone looking about for the blackened skeletons of buildings and piles of bodies, or maybe only Hikaru is dramatic enough to not quite expect but pessimistically hunt for these things, so that he will see them before they see him. There are cars waiting to take them to their operations base in Yamaguchi, a mid-sized city outside of what used to be Hiroshima. With conversation virtually impossible, everyone busies themselves with fresh cigarettes as their luggage is loaded into the cars. Hikaru gives the Russian and the German woman a light. The German man -- Spock -- shakes his head when Hikaru offers a cigarette. Hikaru has never heard of a German who doesn't smoke, but maybe he doesn't really know that many Germans.

He rides in the backseat of one of the cars with Jim and the Russian, the Russian squashed between them, his arms folded in his lap. The Admiral is up front, silent, and Hikaru can tell that Jim wants to talk but won't allow himself to in the Admiral's presence. His foot is bouncing. The Russian is chewing his lip, fidgeting.

"How old are you?" Hikaru hears Jim whisper in the Russian's ear.

"Twenty years old." He says so like Jim is going to be humiliated for asking when he finds out that he's actually quite mature, a whole twenty years. Jim laughs.

"I'm only twenty-seven," he says. He leans over the Russian to stare at Hikaru.

"Are you the translator?" Jim asks. He has this way of whispering that is the loudest thing in the world, but Pike is distracted anyway, staring out his window.

"What the fuck do you think?" Hikaru asks, narrowing his eyes. Jim makes a show of being offended, rearing back, wide-eyed.

"Geez." He elbows the Russian. "Somebody didn't sleep on the plane, huh?"

The Russian laughs nervously, staring straight ahead. Jim presents him with his hand.

"Jim Kirk," he whispers. "Lieutenant Commander. I was at Guadalcanal, then the Philippines."

"Pavel Chekov," the Russian says, his voice much softer than Jim's. "I was at Majdanek, then Berkeley."

"Ah, Berkeley! So you worked on the bomb?"

"Oh." Pavel shrugs in slow-motion, drawing his shoulders up to ears and still staring straight ahead. "I was a research assistant."

"Uh-huh. And what was that other place? Maj-neck?"

"Um, is a place in Poland." Pavel smiles faintly, like he's been poked in the ribs. "You know."

Jim doesn't seem to, actually, but Hikaru understands. He sighs and watches Pavel out of the corner of his eye. He's not sure how someone with fucking freckles survived a concentration camp, but he's not going to pretend to understand just because he lived without plumbing for six months and watched his sisters and his father slowly lose their minds. At least they're still alive, minds mostly regained. Pavel's hair is short, growing in timid little tufts like it still remembers being shaved.

They reach their destination after nightfall, and after passing through the remains of Tokyo. Most sections of the city were completely decimated, reduced to crumbled brick and scattered ash, but Yamaguchi is swarming with life, military personnel and even some Japanese people walking the streets as if they have someplace to be. They pass restaurants with their lanterns lit and an alleyway with empty stalls that must be the city's fledgling black market.

The inn where they'll be based is perched on a hillside that overlooks the city, probably chosen for this reason, as if it's a kind of watchtower, set apart from the action. Hikaru reads the sign on the way up the steep drive, noting that the place features a hot spring: it was a tourist destination, once. He can tell that it was luxurious at one time, which may be another reason the Navy picked it as a base. It's still well-kept, but it looks shabby with Jeeps parked in the front garden and officers hanging around near the lobby doors, smoking and giving Hikaru long looks when he walks past in his uniform. Every fantasy he has now is about doing some real damage to guys like that, guys who think they can look at him as long as they like. He doesn't even remember what it was like to fantasize about sex, soft things, lips and skin.

He has his own room on the fourth floor, with a view of the baths below. It's nicer than anything his family could have afforded if they'd ever come back to Japan. He can see the desperate care that the housekeepers have taken in every corner of the room, the cleaning allowing them to feel like things are still somewhat normal. He hates himself for trying to imagine how anyone here is feeling, and wants something to drink. When a pretty girl comes to pour him tea he asks her if he can have some sake, and she beams at him, just as openly astonished by this walking contradiction as the soldiers by the lobby doors were.

"You're American?" she asks, and Hikaru nods.

"Or Japanese?" she asks, frowning a little, because how can he be both? He's always had trouble with it, but never expected to be divided over battle lines, even when he was in grade school and kids were pulling their wide eyes into slits.

"My parents are from Hokkaido," he explains. He likes speaking their language with someone who is not his sister, and for the first time in his life he thinks he could love a woman, this woman, who is leaning toward him like he's water in a desert.

"Ahh, soo desu," she says, nodding, smiling. "The Americans need you." She tilts her head as if to forgive him. It's more than his sisters ever did, and that's what he really wants, not a lover but a sister who doesn't look at him with accusation. "I will get you some sake," she says with a quick nod.

She comes back with what looks like an expensive bottle and unwraps it for him, pours him a glass, then sits across from him, on her knees on the floor, her hands folded over the skirt of her kimono.

"What's your name?" she asks.

"Hikaru." It's the only time in his life when he hasn't felt ridiculous, answering that question, when he hasn't wished his name was Jim. She smiles.

"Did you come to Japan looking for a wife?"

He shakes his head, the sake cup pressed to his bottom lip. She doesn't look disappointed, exactly, just curious.

"Then why?" she asks. "Were you forced to come?"

"No."

"Then why? If you don't mind." She smiles, blushing.

"I don't know," he says. "I think. Because I couldn't think of anywhere else in the world where I wanted to be."

"Not even America?"

"No, not there. Not there."

She leaves him with the bottle and he drinks the whole thing, sitting by the window and watching the lights of the city. He expected to see a few fires still burning, but they've all gone out by now.

*

In the morning they meet on the third floor, which has been converted into the dining room since the windows on the fifth floor, the original dining room, were blown out. Jim apparently learned this from some of the other officers staying at the inn -- of course he immediately made friends -- and he tells everyone so while they sit around a rectangular table, eating smoked salmon and rice and clear soup with paper-thin slices of mushroom. Hikaru knows the salmon must be special, saved for their arrival, and he tries to appreciate it, though he's never really liked it and wishes he could have some toast and eggs.

"There's kind of a makeshift rec room up there on the fifth floor, with a ping-pong table and stuff," Jim announces happily. He's probably had five cups of coffee already; he always seems to be in motion, bouncing. "You guys should check it out."

Pike lights his first cigarette of the morning as the plates are being cleared, and everyone but Spock follows suit. Again, Hikaru gives the Russian -- Pavel -- a light. Pavel thanks Hikaru quietly and shoots him a cautious, irritating little look, like maybe he thinks he knows what Hikaru is going through. Hikaru can't decide what he likes less, the hicks who scowl at him with surprise or the intellectuals and their sympathy. He can't remember the last time he liked someone.

"Alright," Pike says, tapping ashes, and everybody shuts up, even the intellectuals. "We've got three months to get a draft of this report together and I'm not interested in wasting time. This morning Mr. Spock and Ms. Uhura --"

"Uh-hor-a," she says, correcting his pronunciation. Hikaru waits for Spock to flinch and apologize for his assistant, but he just stares at Pike, still stoic.

"Right," Pike says. "Forgive me. You two will be working mostly in the city, while the rest of us are in Hiroshima. I'll send Lieutenant Sulu here with you to serve as your interpreter."

"That won't be necessary, Admiral," Spock says. He doesn't have much of an accent, and neither does Uhura, actually. They seem a bit like aliens, their posture too perfect, as if they didn't come from any country on this planet.

"Uhura speaks fluent Japanese," Spock says. Hikaru feels kind of gut-punched, because what if he's useless here, what if they just send him home?

"Is that so?" Pike raises his eyebrows in surprise.

"I'm fluent in nine languages," she says.

"Whoa!" Kirk says, boggling at her. Everyone looks at him, and he wilts a bit, laughing at himself. "That's amazing," he mutters. Hikaru sees him shoot a flirtatious look in Uhura's direction, but she doesn't look back.

"Okay, well." Pike glances at Hikaru. "I wasn't planning on bringing you to Hiroshima," he says.

"You can," Hikaru says, too quickly, his cheeks heating. "It's not a problem, sir."

Pike gives him three seconds of consideration, then shrugs. "Alright, so you'll be with my team. I'm taking our physicists, Dr. Scott and Mr. Chekov, to what was the center of the city, and Dr. McCoy, you'll hitch a ride with us to the outskirts. Lieutenant Kirk, you'll be with Dr. McCoy."

"Yes, sir," Kirk says, unnecessarily.

"What exactly am I going to have in the way of supplies when I get there?" McCoy asks. He sounds openly irritated, and maybe Hikaru likes him, a little.

"You'll check in with Dr. Becker when you arrive, he's in charge down there. But remember, your focus is on reporting, not mending. I know you'll be tempted and I don't mind you helping out, but we need extensive notes to go home with."

"Of course," McCoy says, staring down at his ashing cigarette. "Notes."

"That brings me to my next point," Pike says, giving McCoy a look. "This is an extraordinary situation, really unlike anything any of us have dealt with before. I'm gonna tell you right now, I don't want anyone here on my team who is uncomfortable with any of this. If you need to relieve yourself, you let me know and we'll deal with it. You were all chosen for this mission because your superiors thought you could handle it, but your superiors haven't been here."

Hikaru feels like he's being spoken to directly, and he's seething. He'll do anything now to stay. McCoy sits back with a sigh.

"Nothing humanity does to itself is really much of a surprise to me," he says. "Not even this."

"Let's not get into a philosophical discussion about it," Pike says tightly. "Let's do our jobs and do them well. I expect you all to approach this situation with compassion and professionalism." He stands from the table, and Kirk rises, too, then Pavel, uncertainly.

"Shall we get started?" Pike asks, and the others stand, one by one, to follow him out of the room.

*

Hikaru rides out of the city in a Jeep with Pike and McCoy up front, Kirk squeezed between them. Hikaru is in the back with the physicists, who are leaning over him, talking furiously about science, Pavel lapsing into Russian at moments when he gets particularly excited about something and apologizing when he does, shutting his eyes and shaking his head, starting over. Dr. Scott's latent accent peeks out in the same way, and Hikaru can't even hear himself think over the sound of the two of them and the frenzy of their hand gestures.

The day is gray and quiet, the roads mostly empty except for the occasional truck carrying a pallet of American soldiers. Hikaru feels well-hidden in a Jeep full of white men, sandwiched between the scientific reasoning behind all of this. When they reach a kind of shanty-town outside of Hiroshima, dotted with Red Cross tents, he doesn't want to get out. He doesn't have to, not yet; McCoy and Kirk climb out, and Pike turns to ask if anybody wants to sit up front. It'll be another thirty minutes to their destination. Dr. Scott takes him up on the invitation and climbs out of the Jeep with a groan of effort. Hikaru can't tell how old Dr. Scott is; when he speaks he seems very young, but he's balding and has wrinkles around his eyes, which seem as sad as they do cheerful.

Hikaru scoots over to the window when Dr. Scott is gone, and tries to ignore the looks Pavel keeps leveling at him, as if he wants to talk. Up front, Pike and Dr. Scott are talking about gas masks. Because apparently they'll all be wearing gas masks. The road starts to get increasingly empty, and then the scenery goes empty, too, gray along the road, matching the sky. Hikaru's breath gets thin in his chest, like he's breathing through a straw, tighter and tighter, and suddenly Pavel is scooting toward him.

"In Majdanek, everything was burned," he whispers, peering out of Hikaru's window though the view from his is no different than the view from Pavel's, everything cracked and colorless. Disappeared.

"This is not like that, though," Pavel says, leaning over Hikaru's lap to put his nose against the glass. "This is like --" He searches for the word, his cheeks going pink under his freckles.

"Dust," Hikaru says, and suddenly the Jeep is too quiet. Pavel nods and sits back, accepting his gas mask from Pike while his eyes are still locked on Hikaru's. Hikaru is starting to think Pavel wants something from him. Friendship, or forgiveness. But this isn't Hikaru's home and Pavel didn't build the bomb. They're both peripheral. Assistants.

Gas masks on, they all climb out of the Jeep. The ground crunches uncomfortably under their boots, and the silence weighs a million pounds. Hikaru thinks this must be what the surface of the moon is like. Gray and motionless. No air.

He imagines that he's on the moon as he follows behind Pike and the others. Nothing to translate here; the only people around are surveyors doing research, bottling little vials of dust like they'll use it later in experiments or spells, or some combination of the two, in attempts to summon Death himself. Dr. Scott has a meter that makes clicking noises like a field of noisy insects, and he and Pavel stand together, taking readings. Hikaru starts to feel dizzy and sits down on what might have been a street corner. He thinks that tomorrow he'll accompany Spock and Uhura, whether they need a translator or not. Then he curses himself inside the mask and stands. He walks over to Pavel and Dr. Scott and pretends to listen to their muted conversation. Eventually, he steels himself and turns from them, really lets himself look. Pavel was right. This was a different kind of fire.

The day goes on and on. They don't stop to eat lunch. On the way back to Yamaguchi Hikaru tries like hell to keep himself from throwing up, but as soon as the Jeep stops so they can pick up McCoy and Kirk, he stumbles out and gets sick before he can walk far enough from the Jeep to hide it from anybody. He wipes his mouth, wanting to bite his shaking hand off. His body has always been a traitor; he's known that since the first time his cock got hard.

McCoy pulls him up by the shoulder, and Hikaru appreciates the fact that he looks at him sternly and without sympathy. He thrusts a canteen into Hikaru's hand and tells him to drink. Hikaru expects water, and he's glad for the taste of whiskey on the rim, since it prepares him to drink more slowly than he would have otherwise.

There's evidence of the sunset on the way back to Yamaguchi, the sky clearing in patches. Jim is relegated to the backseat with the young people, and Pavel sits in the middle, between Jim and Hikaru. Pavel leans on Hikaru's shoulder just slightly, as if to get further from Jim. Hikaru's stomach pitches and whines and he never wants to be in a moving vehicle again. He glances over at Jim, who is unusually quiet and still. He's pale-faced, too, his arms folded tightly over his chest and his eyes out the window. Hikaru knows he really had it easy at the blast site. The hospital tents were surely much worse.

Pavel catches him looking at Jim and turns to stare at him, then glances at the front seat, where McCoy and Pike are talking soberly about supply routes, Dr. Scott drinking from McCoy's flask. Pavel sucks in a deep breath and leans over to whisper in Hikaru's ear: "You did not see, but I was also sick."

For some reason Hikaru doesn't believe him. He shrugs a little, his shoulder moving against Pavel's, both of them bumping gently against each other as the Jeep trundles back into the city.

"It's just jet lag," Hikaru says, keeping his voice low.

"Yes," Pavel whispers. He looks over at Jim and Hikaru watches with annoyance as Pavel pats Jim's knee. Jim looks up at Pavel as if he's waking from a dream, his eyes refocusing.

"We can play ping-pong, yes?" Pavel says, still whispering. "I am very good."

Jim smiles a little, and Hikaru looks out the window, pressing his lips together. He feels like he's going home, which is something he hasn't experienced since his family was herded out of their house in San Francisco. Figures it would take a long eyeful of hell to make him appreciate having a bed to go back to. Maybe he'll even watch Jim and Pavel play ping-pong. Maybe he'll play, too, because he's actually pretty good himself. But no, the makeshift rec room will be full of assholes like the ones by the door last night, who'll ask him questions and stare too long and make everybody uncomfortable. The feeling of homecoming dissipates and he shuts his eyes against the window, pretending to sleep.

*

That night, the group has dinner together in the dining room, which is divided into eight separate sections, each holding a component of the post-bomb culture, Marines in one room, Army in another, everybody loud and laughing. Pike's group is more serious, but they're plenty loud, Dr. Scott and Dr. McCoy especially. They're having an argument about the Irish potato famine, of all goddamn things. Pike hasn't joined them for dinner, so everyone's tongue is a bit loose.

"All nationalism is born of hunger," McCoy says, smacking his sake cup against the table. "And I don't mean pride or loyalty, I mean nationalism."

"You mean fascism," Dr. Scott says. "You mean Hitler, you mean Mussolini, and that's fear more than anything, and what's hunger but the fear of starving?"

Scott's voice is really too jovial for this discussion, and Hikaru struggles not to laugh inappropriately. Beside him, Pavel is eating his noodles all wrong, biting them off sloppily with the bowl held under his chin, most of them sliding sadly off of his chopsticks. He's much more focused on the struggle to get noodles into his mouth than the train of the conversation, and, noticing this, Hikaru finally lets himself laugh. Pavel gives him a sidelong look and turns bright red.

"I bet the Army guys have forks over there, if you want me to go steal one for you," Hikaru says. Pavel sets his bowl down, pouting.

"No," he says. "I want to learn."

"Here," Hikaru says, holding up his own chopsticks. "Look at where I've got my fingers. Now try it. That's right, but get your index finger out from between them. It's more subtle than that, it's not a pinching motion, unless you're just picking up a dumpling or something."

"A dumpling?" Pavel beams as if this he knows: dumplings. Hikaru scoffs and shakes his head, chewing down his grin.

"Oh, are you giving a lesson?" Jim asks, leaning over, his own chopsticks practically perpendicular to each other in his clumsy grip. The color has returned to his cheeks. Hikaru sighs as if he's very put upon, but leans across Pavel so that Jim can see what he's doing.

"Contrary to what you're suggesting, Dr. McCoy," Spock says suddenly, and everyone falls quiet, because he hasn't spoken since he sat down. "The population here seems to have rejected any nationalist impulses completely since the Emperor's surrender. They are tired of living with war, and the military personnel I spoke to informed me that the citizens have been quite cooperative, even helpful."

Hikaru bites his tongue to keep from shouting What choice do they have? He knows it's not fair, and that what Spock is saying is true. People were tired of the Emperor's war-mongering. Hikaru's father hated him. He left the country with his family because he feared something like this, the oncoming wrath of the rest of the world. His grandparents called his father soft and told him he was only moving from one Imperialist teat to another.

"So your interviewing is going well, eh?" Scott says, and Spock frowns, just slightly, mostly with his eyebrows.

"Our interviews with enlisted men have provided some essential information," Spock says. "But we have had some trouble interviewing the citizens."

"They are not so interested in speaking to a black woman," Uhura says, trying to keep her features in their usual stoic order, though Hikaru can see the strain.

"Unfortunately, in such an isolated culture there are many preconceived notions about outsiders," Spock says. "I was wondering, Mr. Sulu, if we might have more luck with you asking the questions."

"I'll come with you," Hikaru says. "I wasn't much help at the blast site, anyway." He regrets this as soon as he's said it. He's not sure why. He wonders if Pavel really got sick. He imagines Pavel and Jim continuing to bond on the trips back to Yamaguchi. They're laughing with each other now, chopsticks falling into Jim's lap.

"Excellent," Spock says. "It will be interesting to note the difference in the reception we receive." He goes back to eating, and Hikaru looks at Uhura, whose jaw is tight, chopsticks paused at the edge of her plate.

After dinner, Dr. Scott heads to the rec room with Pavel and Jim. Hikaru turns down their invitation to join them and goes to lie in the dark in this room, listening to the footsteps and laughter up on the fifth floor; he can even hear the tock of the ping-pong ball. He goes to the window and looks down at the baths, which are empty. The lanterns are still lit, so he decides it's worth a try. Anything to get out of his room and away from the sound of the others. It's as if the whole world is upstairs, every survivor except for him.

A half-asleep man who is sitting near the entrance to the hot spring tells Hikaru he can go in; somehow Hikaru gets the impression that he's the owner of the inn. He's an old man, his voice scratched up by age, and Hikaru is afraid he'll try to engage him in conversation after hearing him speak Japanese, but he doesn't seem interested. He lights more lanterns while Hikaru showers and then leaves him to it.

The night air is just a little cold, a stiff wind blowing across the hot spring, making steam rise up over the water. There's a small waterfall in one corner of the bath that helps to block out the noise from the fifth floor. Hikaru sinks into the water and takes a seat on an underwater bench that runs along the back edge. The bath is about twenty feet long and ten feet wide, the all-natural sort that would have attracted plenty of holiday-takers when it was operational. No tacky tile or cement like the ones in San Francisco where Hikaru went with his father when he was young. He used to hate it, being naked in front of other people, even Japanese people, even his father. Now that he's older he understands the peacefulness of the whole ritual, but he's still glad that the bath is empty.

It doesn't stay empty for long. When Hikaru hears the entry-way door sliding open he's afraid it will be the old man coming to tell him that he's closing the bath down for the night, but it's not him. It's a white guy in slacks and a worn Oxford shirt, and when he takes his shoes off in the undressing area Hikaru realizes it's Pavel. He turns back around, fluctuating between annoyance and relief. It's good to be alone here, to think, but he's glad to see Pavel, for some reason. He listens to the sound of him washing up and sinks down further into the water, putting his shoulders under.

"Hello," Pavel says as he climbs in, sitting a little too close. Hikaru gives him a quick sideways glance. He's so pale; it's like sitting next to the moon, hard not to stare at the glow.

"Hey," Hikaru says. "I thought you were playing ping-pong?"

"I was." Pavel draws his wet hands up to scrub them across his face, sighing. "It got too noisy, too many people came. I don't like big crowds so much."

"Who were the bigger assholes, the Army guys or the Marines?" Hikaru asks, smirking.

"Assholes?" Pavel says, smiling in his oblivious way, though actually, Hikaru would bet that there isn't a single oblivious bone in Pavel's body. "Oh, it was equal, I suppose."

"Sounds about right."

Pavel slips down further into the water, resting his head against the rock and smiling up at the sky. He's got a sleepwalking quality to him, like he doesn't quite believe he's still alive. Hikaru hasn't met any other survivors. The stories about the camps were just starting to pour out of Europe when he left America.

"We had these baths in Russia," he says, "Only they were not usually outside, at least not in my city."

"What city is that?" Hikaru asks, though he probably shouldn't. It's probably a sensitive subject, probably not standing anymore, whatever city it was.

"Leningrad," Pavel says. He goes quiet then, and Hikaru feels guilty, scratching at his elbow. His neighborhood in San Francisco was basically demolished during the internment, but the actual city is still there. Nothing fell from the sky to flatten it. There were no tanks charging down Lombard.

"How'd you learn to speak English?" Hikaru asks.

"University," Pavel says. "But I was not very good, not before I came to Berkeley. How did you learn Japanese? Your parents?"

"Yeah." Hikaru scoffs a little, because it's a stupid question, but maybe his was, too. "They didn't want me to come here."

"Why not?"

"Because," Hikaru says, scoffing again. "They didn't like the Emperor but they don't like what the Americans did, either. They don't want me here picking up the pieces for American generals. They don't like MacArthur, the things he said after the surrender."

Pavel studies Hikaru's face for a moment, his shoulders slumped. He seems older, here with Hikaru, than he did among the others.

"I sometimes wonder what my parents would think," Pavel says. "It was the Russians who liberated Majdanek. I was taken back to my university, but one of my professors who left for America before the siege wrote to me and told me to come. He said he and the others at Berkeley were 'working on a solution.' Can you believe that? He's a Jew, too! A solution! But I went. Some people at the university, they helped me to get out."

"Helped you get out? What, you weren't supposed to go?"

"Oh no. They did not want me to, the state, the leadership. The Germans had taken me and two of my professors to Berlin during the siege. They wanted us to work for them, to tell them things about our research, but they had just killed everyone we knew. We didn't know what to do, to think, I don't think I even remembered my physics, I couldn't have helped anyone do anything. We were in shock, but they killed one of my professors, very -- badly, to warn us, and." Pavel points to his eye and draws his finger away from it, as if he's speaking in sign language. Hikaru understands well enough. They made us watch.

"Jesus," Hikaru says.

"Yes, and then we tried to help, but they were very backward, we were surprised, they hardly knew the difference between science and the occult. I was there for a long time with my professor, Pieter, he was a great friend to me. Of course we tried to escape and they killed him. To me they did -- other things, then sent me to Majdanek. I don't know why they didn't kill me." Pavel's voice is not exactly light, but he sounds dreamy, as if he's talking in his sleep, far away from everything he's saying. "I don't know why," he says again, quietly.

"Fuck," Hikaru mutters, wishing he could offer something better than disgusted amazement. He looks at Pavel's hand, underwater, gripping the bench.

"Well, so," Pavel says, shrugging. "When the Russians came to Majdanek they brought me home, and quickly I left, against their wishes, taking my bomb-building brain with me. It did not feel like home anymore. Of course, Berkeley felt even less so. I don't know." He shrugs again. "I think when your parents are dead you have no home. Tell me, do you have siblings?"

Hikaru is overwhelmed, his tongue dry in his mouth. He wonders if all Russians are this matter of fact or if Pavel is simply insane. Hikaru could hardly blame him if he was.

"Um, yeah," Hikaru manages to say. "Three sisters."

"Three! Are they younger than you?"

"Yeah -- well all except Meiko, my twin."

"Your twin?" Pavel leans toward Hikaru, his eyes bugging out, as if this is truly extraordinary, while Pavel's story was commonplace. "You have a twin who is a girl?"

"Yeah, you know. We're fraternal twins."

"You must be very close."

"Not really."

"Me, I have no sibling. Siblings," he corrects, shaking his head at himself. "But, just as well, yeah? Probably they would have died."

"God," Hikaru says with a groan. "You must be so -- glad it's over." He winces at this, an ignorant thing to say, but Pavel nods somberly.

"However," Pavel says. "I do not think it is over. Not when we have this bomb."

"Oh -- yeah -- of course, I didn't mean to say --"

"It is a strange project to work on. Military is very excited, scientists not so much. Though at the same time, in a sense, yes, they are. We talk about it quite a bit. Scientific discovery, it is a bit like imperialism, maybe." He turns to Hikaru and grins. "Sorry I am talking so much, maybe you came here to be quiet."

Hikaru feels dizzy, and he can't drag his eyes from Pavel, who is still glowing, pale and clean and accepting of every atrocity he's known. But he can't be accepting. He must still be in shock.

"Aren't you angry?" Hikaru asks, feeling stupid. He will always feel stupid around Pavel, of course; he's a genius who has lived ten lives to Hikaru's one half.

"Angry," Pavel says, looking down at the water. "Yes, I must be. I had a toothache in America and they took me to a dentist, he says I'm grinding my teeth away at night, isn't that strange? I think I must not really sleep. I don't like it the way I used to. Of course there are dreams and things. I'm sorry," he says, grinning again. "I think I am sounding like I want you to pity me."

"Well --" Hikaru winds up to say Of course I do, then stops himself. He sighs and looks up at the real moon, which is grayish and sad compared to the freckled white of Pavel's shoulder.

"I have told this story so many times, to everyone in America," Pavel says. "It is like a simple greeting for me now, it just comes out, in a way, to explain. But listen, tell me about your family." He pats Hikaru's shoulder as if he feels sorry for him.

"Um," Hikaru says, shaking his head slowly, trying to regain his bearings. "My father ran a funeral home in San Francisco, mostly for Japanese families. We lived upstairs. There were always dead people in our house, and my sister told me we were cursed, which I believed, I mean, we felt cursed to me. Then the internment, you know. I had just finished high school and I was supposed to start working for my father, and didn't want to, so there was this sick sort of moment where I thought, 'Good, I'm glad everything's ruined.'"

Hikaru clamps his lips together, ashamed of himself. He's never told this to anyone. It's as if he wants to offer Pavel something terrible in exchange for his terrible story, but the only truly terrible thing Hikaru knows is his own secrets, the childish thoughts he had at the start of the end of the world.

"I mean of course I know now that I was stupid," Hikaru says. "I learned pretty quick how stupid I was, as soon as we got there. It was like living with twenty thousand dead people, only they were walking around, trying to come back to life."

"Everyone is stupid during a war," Pavel says. "I was so timid in Berlin, jumping to do what they said. I hate myself when I think of it now. And in Majdanek I was a thief, I stole from dead people every day."

"I stole a piece of candy from a woman's funeral arrangement when I was eight years old." Hikaru is in a hurry to get the words out, the story in his throat like a bubble that will burst if he doesn't tell it, and suddenly, for some reason, he wants to. "My father would have killed me if he found out, I mean he would have killed me. My sister was the one who egged me on, but after I did she told me I would have bad luck for the rest of my life, that I would be haunted. I think she was right," he says, sitting back, a little breathless, and enjoying the enthralled look in Pavel's eyes.

"But Hikaru," Pavel says, touching Hikaru's arm underwater and leaning close, as if he's about to say something that will either condemn or absolve him. "Why did a dead woman have candy?"

"Oh." Hikaru laughs a little, embarrassed. Pavel is still holding his arm, waiting for his answer. "It was an offering, you know, from her family. They put burnable things in the casket to send to the afterlife with the deceased, you know, things they liked."

"Oh, well." Pavel sits back and waves a hand through the air, releasing Hikaru's arm under the water. "That is only symbolic. Your sister is wrong."

Hikaru laughs again. "I know that," he says, though it's not true. He still remembers the shiny red of the wrapper and the way his sister's eyes got wide with excitement as she announced his fate.

"Tell me, do you believe in this, the afterlife?" Pavel asks.

"I don't know," Hikaru says. "I guess I -- want to. I want to believe there's a kind of justice that people can't fuck with."

"Fuck with, hmm." Pavel narrows his eyes, looking out across the dark water. "Well, I am an atheist, but still Jewish, of course. What do you call yourself?" he asks, turning on Hikaru with that wide-open look that makes Hikaru nervous.

"I don't know," Hikaru says, feeling guilty, wishing he felt so confident still identifying as something without believing in God. "My parents aren't very religious, but my dad's customers were Buddhist, so of course he was all about Buddhism during business hours. I guess I -- I don't know. I'm unaffiliated."

"Not Buddhist, then?" Pavel asks. He looks disappointed. Hikaru shakes his head.

"I'm a vengeful American," he says. "Too angry to be Buddhist."

"Angry with whom?"

"Things in general."

"Are you angry about the bombs?" Pavel asks. Hikaru sniffs at the question and looks around the bath. They're still alone, and the fifth floor has gone quiet except for the soft tock tock of one remaining ping-pong game.

"I don't know." Hikaru hates that this is his answer to so many questions. "I try to think about the bombs, and it's like what we saw today. Everything there is just hollow. It's too much, and it extends too far, into everything. I can't see the beginning or the end of it. I don't know where to start."

"Well, I'm angry about that," Pavel says. He doesn't sound angry, or even resigned. He just sounds like someone who has his mind made up about most things. Hikaru thinks that must be nice.

"Then why are you here?" Hikaru asks, feeling cowed and childlike.

"Because they asked me to come," Pavel says. "And they have been good to me, there in California. I have political asylum. I don't want to go back to Russia, and they don't make me. So I came here when they asked."

"Why don't you want to go back?" Hikaru regrets the question instantly. Everything he says to Pavel seems so short-sighted and wrong when he hears it out loud. Pavel just scratches his fingers through his short hair, looking up at the sky, considering his answer.

"Because I am a coward," he says, not as easily as he's said everything else, avoiding Hikaru's eyes now.

"That can't be true," Hikaru says.

"It can be true in one way and not another. I am a coward for not going back there. I wanted to start over. I ran away like a privileged child."

"It's your right to start over after what happened to you. I think," Hikaru adds sheepishly. Pavel turns to smile at him, and Hikaru melts under his gaze. There's something otherworldly about him, as if he's a celestial being that God sent to earth to investigate human suffering. Not that Hikaru really believes in God, or an afterlife, or anything.

"Thank you for thinking so," Pavel says. "I'll miss you tomorrow at the blast site."

Hikaru laughs self-consciously, looking away. "You'll miss my throwing up? Yeah, it really added something to the excursion."

"It was endearing," Pavel says, so soft and serious that Hikaru wonders if he really knows what that word means.

They talk until the lanterns burn out, the temperature dropping every hour, cold wind across their shoulders keeping them from overheating. Every once in awhile they climb out to cool down, lying on their backs on the cold rock and laughing as they shiver their body temperatures back down. Hikaru tries not to notice that Pavel is beautiful from top to bottom, marked by scars like a hand-drawn map.

"We should go to sleep," Pavel finally says, when they've both begun to doze in the bath, their heads tipped back onto the edge of the rock. He smiles over at Hikaru, who has forgotten where he is, and almost who he is, in the past hours. He can't remember the last time he talked with someone like this. Maybe never.

"You were asleep on the plane," Pavel says.

"So was Jim," Hikaru says, not sure what he's getting at.

"Yes, but not the way you were."

"How was -- what do you mean?"

Pavel grins. "There is a Russian folktale about a great warrior named Kirill who falls asleep on his horse as he rides into battle, and because of this he survives, you see, the enemies were confused and when he woke up among them he was able to attack them, to surprise them. It is considered a brilliant strategy, but Kirill is humble and he tells his admirers that he only fell asleep because of the boredom of the long ride to battle, he had no strategy."

"Okay," Hikaru says, laughing uncertainly.

"I am telling it poorly." Pavel has a way of wincing a little when he's ashamed of himself that makes Hikaru want to pet him. "You see, the -- point of the story is that Kirill is naturally a great soldier because he remains calm enough to sleep, because he is not afraid. He is humble about his lack of strategy but he is capable enough not need strategy."

"Right." Hikaru still doesn't see what this has to do with him sleeping on the plane; he was hardly riding to battle. But Pavel is smiling at him and Hikaru doesn't want to make him explain again.

They get out and dry off, dressing in separate dark corners under the awning that houses the showers and wooden cubbies for clothes and shoes. Hikaru feels vaguely heartbroken when they walk back into the inn, and he looks back at the bath, steaming under only moonlight now. It seems so small and lonely without the two of them in it.

"Goodnight," Pavel whispers when they reach his room on the fourth floor. Hikaru lifts his hand to wave and heads down the hall, his heart pounding the way it did when he enlisted. Here we go, it says as he closes himself into his room. Headfirst into another big mistake.


	2. Chapter 2

Hikaru barely sleeps. He stares at the ceiling until daybreak, thinking about everything Pavel said, imagining the horrors he succinctly described. His heartbeat stays wild, keeping him awake, and he twitches with the desire to walk down the hall and pound on Pavel's door, to make sure he's still safe. Hikaru became quite familiar with the sharp, white scar high on Pavel's left cheek as they sat together in the bath, and somehow the fact that anyone ever hit Pavel in the face is the hardest thing he's ever been asked to believe about humanity.   
  
He gets to breakfast early, and only Spock and Uhura are there, both drinking coffee, Uhura smoking, neither of them speaking or even eating much. When Pike arrives he talks about repatriating the Japanese soldiers who were stranded in other countries after the surrender, and how it might take years.   
  
"Don't tell anyone you can help them when you're out there interviewing with Dr. Spock," Pike says to Hikaru. His face softens a little. "Because you can't."   
  
"Yes, sir," Hikaru says, grateful for the appearance of Jim, who is yawning hugely as he comes through the door, Dr. McCoy following close behind with his usual grimace. Pavel and Dr. Scott are the last to arrive, again talking furiously about physics, and Hikaru keeps his eyes on his food, wondering if Pavel has long, passionate conversations with everyone he meets, and if it even means anything to him. When Pavel drops down to sit beside Hikaru with a smile, Hikaru feels like someone has lit a fire in his chest, and it's warm, yes, but dangerous, already close to burning out of control.   
  
"Did you rest well?" Pavel asks Hikaru, reaching for the tea. "I hope you won't be too tired today."   
  
"I'm fine, I -- slept," Hikaru says, lying. Pavel is wearing the same clothes he wore yesterday, but now with a worn tweed coat over his shirt. He looks different in the light of day, kind of moth-eaten. They both drink a lot of tea while Pike and Dr. McCoy have an argumentative discussion about Manchuria.   
  
"Look at my hand," Pavel says, laughing a little and holding it out for Hikaru to see. It's shaking.   
  
"From the tea," Hikaru says. "You use too much sugar."   
  
"Sugar!" McCoy barks, making Pavel jump. "Well, use it while you can. Sugar and coffee -- those'll be the first to disappear."   
  
"It is true," Pavel says, and he winks at Hikaru, who feels completely lost, as if he's had a brain transplant since he last sat at this table.   
  
They split into their separate groups, Hikaru heading into the city with Spock and Uhura while the others climb into the Jeep bound for Hiroshima. Hikaru watches it trundle away, Pavel's head bobbing between Jim and Dr. Scott's in the backseat. He can't decide if he's relieved that he's not accompanying them or sorry about staying behind. Mostly he's overcome with a feeling that the Jeep will never come back, or that it can only come back so many times, something to do with rules about crossing the line between life and death. It's out there somewhere, on the road to Hiroshima. Invisible of course, but Hikaru is pretty sure that his stomach problems started when they crossed it.   
  
He takes the train, which is still running to most stations, into the city with Spock and Uhura. The station where they disembark is crowded with homeless people, many of them children. They run forward to beg when they see Hikaru's uniform, and shrink back in confusion when they realize he's Japanese, or at least that he looks like he is.   
  
They climb to the street and into an only semi-ruined section of the city. The people Hikaru interviews on behalf of Spock, who takes notes while Uhura wields a recorder, tell Hikaru that he's standing on the grounds of a modest temple that was destroyed during the bombings prior to the bombings, the survivable attacks that were launched on this city rather than its unlucky neighbor. He scans the grounds and sees the remains of a bright red bridge over what used to be a koi pond, dried up now, all the fish gone. His stomach pitches unexpectedly, the way it did when they were returning from Hiroshima, and maybe there is more than one line between life and death in this country; maybe they are everywhere, crisscrossing and netted, catching the survivors like spider webs.   
  
"What happened to the fish?" Hikaru asks one woman while Spock is busy muttering to Uhura in German. The woman is small and rough-skinned, a native of Nagoya who came to Yamaguchi after her home was destroyed only to find that the city was already overflowing with refugees. She frowns at Hikaru in confusion and he points to the remains of the koi pond.   
  
"Ahh," she says. "Those fish? People took them long ago, to eat. As soon as the gates came down, while the temple was still burning. Then the water, little by little. Now some orphans live under the bridge. They're vicious, those children. It's amazing how quickly they organize, not like adults. I think I've seen more adults waste time with weeping than children."   
  
"If we could please get back to the questionnaire, Lieutenant," Spock says, coming forward. Uhura again thrusts the microphone of her recorder in the woman's face. The woman backs up, making a face at Uhura.   
  
"Where did she come from?" the woman asks, still frowning in Uhura's direction.   
  
"She's in the American Navy," Hikaru says, lying, because Spock was right, the disoriented survivors do respect the American officers, for the most part.   
  
"A woman?" she says. "And a black? I've never heard of it."   
  
"Well, now you have," Hikaru says, glancing at Spock. He remembers then that Uhura understands Japanese, and glances at her, his face burning. She only stares back, keeping any hint of emotion from her face.   
  
"How about you?" the woman asks, turning her frown on Hikaru. "They let you fight in their Navy? I thought the Americans rounded the Japanese up like the Jews and killed them all?"   
  
"No, no," Hikaru says.   
  
"Are you the only one they kept alive, so they could use you to talk to street people? Listen, my son already knows two English words: kaan-di and gum-u. Will the Americans pay to fix his teeth when they fall out? That's what I want to know."   
  
"Please," Hikaru says. "My colleague here has more questions for you. If you're tired of answering questions we can find someone else."   
  
The woman laughs, leaning back to gaze up at Hikaru as if he's a clown who is making faces for her amusement.   
  
"Tired from answering questions! No, I am tired from asking them. I never get any answers, but what does it matter? Ask me things, yes, it's nice for a change."   
  
Pike was right to warn Hikaru about the repatriation problem. Most of the people he talks to grab his arms and beg him to help them bring their relatives home from China, Korea, Russia. Others don't know which country to ask about, but they still plead with Hikaru for help in dialects he doesn't recognize, as if he has a massive list of missing Japanese that he can unroll and consult.   
  
"Don't you have a gun?" Uhura asks when he's nearly mobbed outside of a train station. They're hurrying down the street, toward a group of Marines who are manning a street corner.   
  
"They never issued me a gun," Hikaru says. He gives her a look and sees that he doesn't need to explain why. When he served on the _Franklin_ one of his superiors actually had the balls to tell him that supplies were short. That they had _run out of guns_ and that was why he wasn't given one, not because arming him would be too much of a risk, because there was always the threat that he would stand up in the intelligence room and blow away as many officers as he could before he did himself. He half wanted to, once or twice, but he would have been angry to have it mistaken for a nationalist plot and not just a childish, meaningless act of aggression.   
  
They break for lunch at a noodle shop in the financial district, its owner standing outside and waving military men inside, shouting _Meat here!_ and _High quality!_ He looks at Spock and Uhura as if he doubts they'll be able to pay and at Hikaru like he's got two heads, but he doesn't stop them from entering. They get plenty more looks as they wind through the restaurant, crowded with chain smoking servicemen who are hunched around tables loaded with plates of noodles and empty bottles of Kirin. Hikaru isn't sure who gets the most looks, but Spock would have been able to pass for normal if he weren't wearing a turtleneck sweater and asking a harried waitress if she has any 'clean water.'   
  
"Hey," a Marine shouts as Hikaru sits down across from Spock in Uhura. "A kraut, a nigger lady and a Jap in a sailor suit walk into a bar -- stop me if you've heard this one."   
  
The others at his table explode into laughter, and Hikaru looks at Spock and Uhura, prepared to get up and leave, but they're only staring down at the handwritten menus, expressions blank. The Marines' laughter winds down and they go back to their noodles, but they're burning at the edge of Hikaru's vision like a sonic flare, his heart pounding. He thinks of guns and how he hasn't touched one since basic training, under close supervision. He thinks he knows what it must feel like to decide to level entire cities.   
  
"I shouldn't wear this uniform," he says. Uhura keeps her eyes on her menu, and Spock looks up to frown at him in confusion.   
  
"On the contrary, Lieutenant," he says. "Your uniform is a great asset to our attempts to speak to the disenfranchised residents."   
  
"Yeah, because they think I can help them." Hikaru's breath is like a hurricane sitting low in his chest, not doing him any good, just stirring there, gathering strength and making him feel lightheaded. The noodle shop is baking hot and the smoke is like a fog. He lights a cigarette, then offers one to Uhura, who accepts.   
  
"You told that woman I was in the Navy," she says after he's lit it for her.   
  
"Yeah." Hikaru blows smoke from his nose, staring down at the table. "Sorry. I thought." He shakes his head, a flash of his sisters' stricken faces on the day he announced his enlistment blinking behind his eyes. "I thought it would help."   
  
"Well." Uhura waits until Hikaru has drawn his eyes up to her, and then gives him a small smile. "Thank you."   
  
"You are thanking him for telling a lie about you?" Spock asks. He sounds very German, suddenly, in a room packed full of Americans. _You are sanking him?_ Uhura keeps her eyes on Hikaru, and Hikaru can see that Spock is irritated, and that this is the point. For the first time he wonders if they're sleeping together.   
  
"Why did you decide to come here?" Uhura asks Hikaru after they've ordered. Hikaru is still as annoyed by the question as he was when his father asked it, though somehow it didn't bother him so much when Pavel asked, or was it Hikaru who had asked Pavel?   
  
"To experience reality," Hikaru says, in Japanese, because he wants to sound confident, to not just say _I don't know_ again, and the thought of engaging Spock in a philosophical discussion about his reasons for being here makes him incredibly nervous.   
  
"Oh, that's not very romantic," Uhura says, also in Japanese. Spock leans down over his noodle bowl, pretending not to be annoyed. "When I first saw you I was hoping you were a war criminal who was smart enough to earn a job with your enemies."   
  
Hikaru thinks of Pavel, who didn't say much about what it was like being forced to work for the Germans, or even how long he was there. There's an ache at the pit of him, wanting to know all of Pavel's story, and at the same time he hopes he'll never have to hear it.   
  
"How about you?" Hikaru asks, still in Japanese. "Are your reasons for being here romantic?" He raises his eyebrows a little, and Uhura sits back, looking slightly irritated, then impressed.   
  
"Maybe you're smarter than I thought when I found out you'd volunteered for this," she says.   
  
"Didn't you volunteer?" Hikaru asks.   
  
"Yes, but I am studying human suffering. Where else would I be? Are you studying suffering as well?"   
  
"Not by choice."   
  
"Ah." Uhura smiles a little, and glances over at Spock, who is patting his lips with a paper napkin. "You should tell yourself that you are, by choice. It makes the world much more tidy."   
  
Hikaru laughs a little, darkly, and forgets the poisonous presence of the Marines for a moment.   
  
"We should get back to work," Spock says.   
  
"Work, yes," Uhura says. "Holding this recorder is certainly furthering my education."   
  
Spock's lips get a bit tight and he says something in German, lifting his chin. She returns something sharp that Hikaru is glad he can't understand. He excuses himself and heads for the door, throwing some yen down to cover his noodles. He's so absorbed in thoughts about Spock and Uhura and their strangeness that he forgets to expect the arm that shoots out to grab his wrist as he walks past the table of Marines.   
  
"Hey, Nip," the man who grabbed him says. Hikaru pulls free, and several other groups in the restaurant turn to stare.   
  
"Where'd you get that uniform?" the Marine shouts after Hikaru as he continues toward the door. "The Navy handing them things out to homeless Nippers now?"   
  
Hikaru stands outside, smoking, waiting for a fight. People wander by on the street and give him looks, and finally one man stops to frown at him. He's Japanese and wearing mismatched shoes, his shoulders slumped as if he's carrying an invisible load of bags.   
  
"What are you supposed to be?" he asks, and Hikaru throws his cigarette down, ready to take it all out on this half-starved son of a bitch, but then Spock and Uhura come through the door, and the man wanders off, scoffing as if Hikaru has some nerve.   
  
"I shouldn't be here," Hikaru mutters as the three of them walk away, back toward the station where most of their interview subjects are congregated, wandering about blindly, waiting to ask Hikaru about their lost relatives. He didn't mean to say that in English, and doesn't look up when he feels Spock staring at him.   
  
"Lieutenant Sulu," Spock says. "If you are uncomfortable with our mission here, you should inform Admiral Pike about your desire to withdraw. It is important that we have --"   
  
"That is not what he meant at all!" Uhura says, glowering at Spock.   
  
"Forgive me," Spock says. He clasps his hands behind him and straightens his shoulders. "What did he mean, if not that?"   
  
Uhura answers in German, and Hikaru wishes she had used a language he understands, because he knows that she's right, that wasn't what he meant, he doesn't want to leave, but he'd like to have someone explain to him what he did mean, and what he does want, because though he knows it's not quitting the mission and going back to America, he couldn't find the words to explain it himself -- what he wants, where he should be, and why he's chosen this in the meantime -- not in any language he knows.   
  
*   
  
Back at the inn, things are quieter than they were the day before, the sunset bleeding in through the windows. Hikaru goes down to the hot spring bath and again finds it empty. He's relieved at first, as he washes up and heads for the water, but once he's seated on the bench he misses Pavel's company and sits there sweating, wondering if Pavel's team has returned yet. When he hears a footfall behind him he turns around with a nervous feeling of anticipation fluttering in his chest, but it's only the old man, the owner -- Hikaru is sure of it now -- lighting the lanterns as the last of the sun disappears.   
  
Dinner is a more somber affair than usual, though the servers are smiling at the opportunity to serve their guests beef, something brought from the country, especially for the military. Hikaru tries to enjoy his, perhaps the last he'll have for some time, but mostly he spends the meal watching Pavel across the table. Pavel is talking to Dr. McCoy about what he's seen in the medical tents on the outskirts of town.   
  
"I don't know what they want me to write," McCoy says, sawing at his steak until his knife scrapes against his plate. "When you're in the field like this a burn is a fucking burn."   
  
"What is the situation like with the supplies?" Pavel asks. His tweed coat is gone and his sleeves are rolled up. His wrists are so skinny, but otherwise he's sturdier than Hikaru would have expected. He wonders what it was like, gaining the weight back, learning how to eat again.   
  
"Supplies." McCoy scoffs. "What supplies? They've got iodine but no soap. Who brought the iodine? Why haven't they brought soap? Who's in charge? Nobody knows. Those Red Cross boys, Jesus, they must have lost all the volunteers who were worth a damn during the war. I spent half the day telling them how to tie their shoes."   
  
"Tie their shoes?" Pavel says, frowning and leaning toward McCoy. Hikaru looks down at his plate, embarrassed. Last night he'd hoped that Pavel's tendency to lean in close meant something.   
  
"It's an expression, kid," McCoy says.   
  
"Where'd you get the knife?" Pike asks, as if to shut McCoy up. McCoy looks down at his knife, chewing.   
  
"Anderson Hunt and Tackle in Buford, Georgia," he says. "Never leave home without it."   
  
"Where's Jim?" Hikaru asks, also in the interest of shutting McCoy up, because Pavel is grinning at his knife like he's impressed.   
  
"Lieutenant Kirk isn't feeling well," Pike says, keeping his eyes down. "He's in his room."   
  
"Admiral," Uhura says, a bit sharply, and that draws Pike's eyes up from his plate. "It came to my attention while in the city today that Lieutenant Sulu does not have a gun."   
  
Pike frowns, then looks at Hikaru with surprise.   
  
"Is that true?" he says. "They didn't issue you one in California?"   
  
"No, sir," Hikaru says, his cheeks burning. He doesn't even have a knife.   
  
"I think it would be wise if he carried one while accompanying us in the city," Uhura says.   
  
"Yes, absolutely," Pike says, still frowning. "We'll get you one tomorrow morning, first thing," he says, gesturing to Hikaru with a chopstick.   
  
"Thank you, sir," Hikaru mutters, feeling everyone's eyes on him. He excuses himself shortly thereafter, and heads back to his room wondering what the hell he's going to do with the rest of his evening. He wonders if Jim is really in his room or out in the city somewhere, maybe at a whorehouse. They've sprung up everywhere, like mushroom houses that grew overnight.   
  
In his room, he goes to his window and looks down at the bath, but now it's full of officers, splashing around like children and laughing, sake bottles lined up on the rocks. Hikaru wonders where the old man is, and what he thinks of this. He wonders if the man's family was allowed to have any of the beef brought in for the military, and imagines the man's clever wife collecting the bones and boiling them for stock.   
  
He takes off his uniform and resigns himself to drinking some sake and sleep, but as he's pouring a first taste of it into a teacup, there's a knock on his door. For some reason he's expecting Uhura, maybe an apology for embarrassing him in front of everyone at dinner with that business about getting him a gun, but instead it's Pavel standing outside his door, smiling at him sheepishly.   
  
"I thought I would go to the bath but it's so crowded," Pavel says. Hikaru shudders at the thought of Pavel among the men down there, sitting quietly while they make jokes about their dicks. He steps back to allow him inside, and Pavel walks to the middle of the room, looking around. The room feels nicer already, with Pavel's big eyes shining on its four walls. He turns to Hikaru, holding his elbow awkwardly, like he doesn't know what to do next.   
  
"Would you mind if I sat and talked to you?" he asks, looking around for a place to sit. There's nothing but the cushions at the table near the window and the futon, which was made up neatly by the maid while Hikaru was away.   
  
"Of course I don't mind," Hikaru says, going to the table. "I was just about to have some of this, do you want some?" He lifts the sake and Pavel's embarrassed little smile morphs into an easy grin.   
  
"Yes, please," he says, almost breathlessly, and Hikaru laughs as he pours some sake into a teacup. He hands it Pavel and lifts his own cup as if to toast him.   
  
"Hey, here's to us," Hikaru says, feeling a little drunk already with Pavel smiling at him like that. "Probably the only Ruskie and Jap who are getting along these days."   
  
"Yes, probably," Pavel says, grinning. He drinks the whole cup in one swallow and holds it out for a refill. "Except," he says while Hikaru pours. "You're American."   
  
"Well, I don't know how much longer the Americans and Russians will be friends, either," Hikaru says. "So let's enjoy it while it lasts." He winks, and wishes he could take it back, feeling cheesy.   
  
"Yes, truly," Pavel says. He drains his cup again and sits down on Hikaru's futon, folding his legs up Indian-style. Hikaru notices then that Pavel isn't wearing any shoes, just a pair of navy-colored socks. Hikaru's own shoes are of course in the foyer, away from the tatami mats, and he grins at the thought of Pavel wandering the whole inn without shoes or even sandals, and wonders if the girl who cleans his room gave him an earful when he tried to step on the mats with his boots.   
  
"I am worried about Jim," Pavel says when Hikaru sits beside him, holding the sake bottle by the neck. "He seems not so good, and he didn't have any dinner. I asked him in the Jeep to play ping-pong with me and he said no, that he was tired."   
  
"Hmm," Hikaru says, a little bubble of fury popping in his chest. So Pavel only came here because Jim was occupied with moping. "It's like he's never seen civilian casualties before," Hikaru says.   
  
"Had you seen them?" Pavel asks, leaning in closer. He reminds Hikaru of a Disney character, a little bird who swoons toward Snow White.   
  
"Well, no," Hikaru says. "I was on an aircraft carrier."   
  
"I think Jim was as well."   
  
"He's an infant," Hikaru says, then regrets it. He wanted to keep this part of himself hidden from Pavel, the part that hates everyone.   
  
"I know," Pavel says gravely, staring down into his tea cup. "This is why I worry about him. But I think also that he was chosen for this mission for a reason. I do not think he's unintelligent. Certainly he's not insensitive."   
  
"Yeah, well," Hikaru mutters, ready to change the subject. "He'll live."   
  
"So tell me," Pavel says, taking the cue. He reaches over to put a hand on Hikaru's knee. "How was your day with Spock and Uhura?"   
  
"Oh, pretty terrible," Hikaru says, pouring more for both of them, the last of the bottle. "But it wasn't their fault."   
  
"They are a little strange, yes?" Pavel says, and Hikaru laughs. Pavel does, too, with his cup pressed to his lips, and Hikaru's anxiety about Jim, and McCoy's knife, and the whole fucking day, is washed away.  
  
"Yeah," Hikaru says. "Uhura's pretty swell, though. She's got a sense of humor."   
  
"Apparently she wants you to have a gun," Pavel says. "Were you threatened today, in the city?"   
  
"No," Hikaru says, though he's not sure that's true. "It's just -- people looking for their lost relatives, you know, they see a guy in uniform who speaks Japanese and they start to swarm."   
  
"Ah, yes." Pavel nods down at his lap. "There was -- I understand this. The Germans were always telling me my parents were dead, but I didn't know for sure. When I went back, of course, I found out."   
  
"God, I'm sorry," Hikaru says. "That must -- were you able to, um. Give them any sort of service?"   
  
"Oh -- no." Pavel purses his lips a little, shaking his head. His eyes, when they go unfocused, look like something from a religious painting, super-human.   
  
"I'm sorry," Hikaru says again, uselessly. He wants to slide an arm around Pavel's shoulders, but his intentions aren't wholly pure, so he doesn't. Pavel finishes his sake and puts the tea cup down on the floor, very carefully.   
  
"Can I tell you about them?" he asks, turning his gaze on Hikaru with the manic energy of a teenager.   
  
"Yeah, of course," Hikaru says. He shifts around so that he's facing Pavel on the futon, and Pavel does the same, their knees almost touching.   
  
"Everyone wants to know the story of what happened during the war, but they take the part before for granted, I think," Pavel says. "Not everyone was happy, or even better off, before. Our country had been a suffering a long time. Long, long time. But I was an only child, spoiled. I was happy. My mother was a swimmer, she would have been in the Olympics if Russians were allowed to compete. My father made watches -- I used to have one he made for me, but of course it's gone now. It takes a special kind of intelligence to make a watch, I do not think people know this, and also much patience. We had a little bit of money, enough. People will always need a watch, my father would say. No matter if the world is going to hell, they will have appointments to keep with somebody, somewhere."   
  
Pavel is touching Hikaru's knee, very absentmindedly and with distracted little brushes of his fingertips, as if he doesn't realize he's doing it, even though he's staring down at his fingers, watching. Hikaru is flushed and ashamed of himself. He wants to pull Pavel into his lap and hold him there all night. He thinks that most people who meet him must feel that way, and that this must be the reason the Nazis didn't kill him. They must have looked at him and seen an albatross.   
  
"The Germans took me from my university," Pavel says. "It wasn't safe to go, my mother had told me. I was stubborn, you see, they had spoiled me, they had kept me safe from so many things. I thought I could walk between the raindrops."   
  
Hikaru nods, because he knows the feeling. He wasn't spoiled as a child, but when he enlisted he thought he could blend in, that there was something invisible about him that would keep him safe.   
  
"I just wish I had been there when they died," Pavel says, his fingers going still on Hikaru's knee. "I wish I had seen it, even, or experienced it somehow. Is that crazy?" he asks, looking up at Hikaru.   
  
"No," Hikaru says, though he doesn't really understand why anyone would want that.   
  
"It seems disrespectful that I wasn't there," Pavel says. He winces a little, shaking his head. "That is the wrong word," he mutters.   
  
"I think I know," Hikaru says, almost afraid to offer any input, because his parents are alive. "I mean -- maybe you just want to know for sure? Like you can't fully believe it because you weren't there?"   
  
"No, no, I believe it," Pavel says. "I felt it for a long time before I knew for sure, that they were gone. I haven't found them, you know. Their ghosts."   
  
"Ghosts?"   
  
"Yes -- I do not mean this literally, of course. I do not believe in any afterlife. But there is a way the memories of the dead reach you that feels like a ghost, yes? They haven't reached me yet. It is as if I just lost them. I have my memories but they feel as if they happened to someone else."   
  
Hikaru wishes he could offer something useful, but he's never lost someone close to him. It's a miracle, considering the state of the world, but it doesn't make him feel lucky. It just feels like part of the curse, the thing that keeps him separate from everyone else.   
  
"I think that is why we're here," Pavel says. He lifts his eyes to Hikaru's, and something caves in Hikaru's chest, like Pavel has punched a hole through him, and he doesn't know if he should be grateful or upset.   
  
"What?" Hikaru says. He's feeling dizzy again, his footing gone. Pavel's hand becomes a fist against the flat part of Hikaru's knee, a more intentional gesture.   
  
"We're looking for the ghost of what happened," Pavel says. "Trying to remember something we didn't experience."   
  
"Yeah," Hikaru says, mumbling. He looks down at the clean white of the futon between his and Pavel's folded legs. He wishes he were a genius. If he didn't speak English, Pavel never would have to know that he isn't.   
  
"So tell me about your family," Pavel says, pushing his knuckles more firmly against Hikaru's knee.   
  
"I told you," Hikaru says, feeling guilty, as if Pavel is forcing himself to search for some strain of conversation that Hikaru can keep up with, wishing that he was upstairs playing ping-pong with Jim, who is sensitive, apparently.   
  
"You told me what your father does for business, but that was all."   
  
"Well." Hikaru moves away from Pavel, unable able to think while Pavel is touching him. He lies down on the futon, on his back with his hands on his chest, and Pavel does the same, just like they did last night at the bath, stretched out on the rocks and laughing up at the sky. He wonders how Pavel can be like this after what he's been through, and how many of Pavel's memories are ghosts that are still eluding him. Maybe Pavel is the ghost and it's his unbearable memories that are still searching for him. Hikaru hopes they never catch him. Pavel is staring at him like he wants a bedtime story, and Hikaru wishes he had something better, or worse, to tell him.   
  
"My parents met when they were teenagers," he says. "My dad, at the time, thought he wanted to be a dentist. My mother talked him out of it. She thought that all that looking down people's throats was morbid and disgusting, so what does she encourage him to do? Open a funeral parlor. Her parents were funeral directors in Sapporo, big time members of the community -- hell, they're still there. Making a killing, I imagine. Uh, no pun intended. But, yeah, so they ran away to America, because things here, you know, the fighting with China, with anybody in striking distance who didn't lie down for the great Empire, it was making things hard. My mother's parents were all in favor, they thought my parents could make a fortune in America. My dad's parents, they hated the idea. My mother was pregnant with me and my sister and they didn't want their grandchildren born in another country. But my mom's side won out, and that was that."   
  
"That was that?" Pavel turns toward Hikaru. He's got sugar at the corner of his lips, as if he had been eating it with a spoon, taking McCoy's advice about enjoying it while he can. Hikaru wonders if Pavel is still a thief, and for some reason he hopes that he is.   
  
"Yeah, you know," Hikaru says, beginning to relax into this feeling, the shouts from the men down in the bath so endlessly irrelevant. "We moved to San Francisco, Dad opened the funeral home with money from my mother's family, me and my sister were born, then my other sister, then my other sister. We went to school, then there was the internment, and now here I am."   
  
"You said your sister's name was Meiko, your twin," Pavel says. Hikaru is surprised he remembers. Pavel sits up on his elbow and gazes down at Hikaru in a way that makes him nervous for a moment. "What are your other sisters' names?"   
  
"Natsumi and Yasuko -- why?"   
  
Pavel shrugs. "I like the way your language sounds, and the names. Maybe I'll try to learn it while I'm here. Teach me something," he says, and he gives Hikaru a friendly shove when he groans.   
  
"Come on," Pavel says, grinning. "I am a quick learner. And I will teach you some Russian in exchange."   
  
So they spend the rest of the evening exchanging words in their native languages. It's hard for Hikaru to believe now that he didn't speak any English until he was four years old, when his mother started taking him and his sister to a day school for 'foreign children' at a Christian church. He had hated that school so much, and hated his sister for fitting in easily with the other Japanese girls and quickly becoming their ringleader, often encouraging them to torment Hikaru. He and Meiko had been best friends before that school, inseparable, but as soon as Meiko saw Hikaru being picked on by the Chinese boys, who outnumbered him, she dissociated herself, the traitor. Part of him must still associate speaking English with that particular hell, because there's something cozy and effortless about speaking Japanese, not just intellectually but emotionally. At least, this was true before he began translating for the Navy. Now it feels that way again, as he and Pavel turn onto their stomachs so that Hikaru can write out the _katakana_ alphabet for him. He spells out the closest approximation he can of Pavel's name -- _Pa-be-ru_ \-- and Pavel laughs, writing out Hikaru's name in Cyrillic.   
  
"When I was a kid it blew my mind that people had different words for things," Hikaru says. "You know, when I was first learning about languages. Like, why didn't the Americans just call it Nippon like we did?" He thinks of that Marine calling him a Nipper in the noodle shop. He wishes his experience of Japan, and the world after the bombs, and everything, really, could be confined to this room, Pavel beside him on the futon, the notebook on the floor, their shoulders bumping together as they take turns writing out words.   
  
"That's why I like science," Pavel says. "The same in every country."   
  
"Is that really true?" Hikaru asks. "Nothing about the procedures at Berkeley surprised you?"   
  
"Well, some small things about how they do their work, but not the actual experiments, not the principles."   
  
Hikaru laughs, and Pavel looks over to grin at him in confusion.   
  
"What is funny?" he asks. Hikaru turns onto his back, ashamed to tell him, but then he can't hold it in.   
  
"Say _preen-ci-ples_ again," he says, and holds his arm over his face when Pavel pounces on him, still smiling.   
  
"Fine, you think it's funny how I speak English, tomorrow I'll speak only to Uhura, in Russian." Pavel is tackling Hikaru like someone who's never had a fight with a sibling, too gently.   
  
"I did that with her today," Hikaru says, rolling onto his side as tears of laughter begin to form in his eyes. "In front of Spock. You should have seen him. He was trying so hard to pretend not to care, he practically turned green."   
  
"I like Dr. Spock," Pavel says, leaning on Hikaru's shoulder. Hikaru could sleep like this, with Pavel's weight holding him in place.   
  
"Why?" Hikaru asks. "He's such a cold fish."   
  
"I think he's interesting. Have you read his books?"   
  
Hikaru snorts. "Do I look like I've read his books?"   
  
"Hikaru," Pavel says scoldingly, placing his chin on his hands, which are still folded on Hikaru's shoulder. "Well, his books are very interesting. And he's actually not cold at all, he left Germany because he objected to the experiments some scientists were performing on humans after the first war. Also because he's a Jew, but, well. He is not so cold, I don't think. You know, my parents thought about leaving Russia in thirty-nine. But they didn't want to be strangers in someone else's country."   
  
"That's what I am," Hikaru says, still lying on his side, never wanting to move, as long as Pavel stays where he is, warm against Hikaru's back. "Here and in America," he says, his eyes sliding shut. If he falls asleep like this, maybe Pavel will stay through the night.   
  
"I have no country anymore, either," Pavel says. "Of course, this is nothing new for a Jew, eh?"   
  
Hikaru keeps his eyes shut, and Pavel stays where he is, maybe waiting for a response. Hikaru's only friend on the _Franklin_ had been a Jewish guy, Walter Malkin from Vermont. He died in March, when the Japanese attacked. Hikaru felt personally responsible, as if he'd failed as an interpreter, contributed somehow to Walter's death. He wasn't Japanese enough, or American enough, to tell the others how to save him.   
  
"You know what my mother said when she read about what the Germans were doing?" Hikaru asks, starting to drift toward something like authentic sleep. He can hear Pavel's breath, and feel it, just barely, against his cheek. He thinks that if they fell asleep here, with that notebook at the head of the bed, their names written in it in the languages they exchanged, it would be powerful good luck, curse-breaking stuff.   
  
"What did she say?" Pavel asks. His voice is soft, as if he's conscious of how close he is to Hikaru's ear.   
  
"She said, 'The only time your father every spoke badly about the Jews was when they circumcised you at that Mount Sinai hospital without asking us.'"   
  
For maybe a tenth of a second Hikaru experiences a sharp needling of icy regret, because what the hell is he doing talking about his penis at a time like this, but then Pavel starts laughing, hard, shaking against Hikaru's back until he rolls onto the futon to cover his face with his hands, cracking up. Hikaru sits up and grins down at him, proud of himself.   
  
"Poor Hikaru!" Pavel says, still choking on his laughter. "I apologize on behalf of all Jews everywhere."   
  
"Yeah, well," Hikaru says, his cheeks hot. "That was my mother's, you know, brilliant commentary on the situation."   
  
"Will you write to them?" Pavel asks, still convulsing with the aftershocks of his laughter. "Your parents?"   
  
"Oh, yeah, I guess," Hikaru says. "My mother, she was. Not happy with me when I left."   
  
"Then you should definitely write to her. Do you want to hear something awful? Sometimes I write letters to my parents. I started doing it in Berlin, just so I could see things in writing the way I would tell it to them, if they were anyplace that I could send letters to. I would tell them I was okay, that it was not so bad, that at least I wasn't in a camp, and the Germans fed me well and didn't hurt me, because they wanted me healthy and working hard for them. This was not true, you know, but it is what I would have told my parents. It made me feel better to write it, as if I could believe it a little, too. The officer who found my notebook full of letters, he took it away and told me my parents were dead, as if I didn't know that already. Well, actually he said many worse things, but he was lying, he wasn't there when they died."   
  
Hikaru sighs and lies down beside Pavel, propping himself up on one elbow. He wants so badly to touch Pavel, and he tells himself that it's not for entirely selfish reasons, but because Pavel looks like he wants to be touched, stroked and comforted. When Hikaru was young he used to lurk in the corners of the funeral parlor and watch his mother comfort grieving widows and sisters, and mothers, too. She was an artist of comfort, always giving just enough, never too maudlin or coming off as forced. When Hikaru was hurt or upset, she was not the same way with him. She told him to stop crying, to get up, to act like a man. He would lie in bed at night wishing Meiko would die so that he could cry and cry and have his mother treat him like an honored client.   
  
"I was so mad when he took that notebook," Pavel says. His voice is soft, his eyes unfocused. "I cried for it more than I've ever cried for anything else. And I was mad at myself for doing something so weak and stupid, something they could use to mock me more than they already did. But when I got to Berkeley I started doing it again. 'Dear Mama and Papa, here I am among the palm trees.' Stupid things. I did it for the first two weeks I was there, every night." Pavel curses himself suddenly, in Russian, under his breath. He shakes his head and his eyes refocus, his gaze snapping up to meet Hikaru's. "Sorry I am talking so much," he says.   
  
"It's okay," Hikaru says. "I like listening to you talk." He's lying on his back now, feeling like he used to as a child when he imagined that Peter Pan might come through the open bedroom window and be his friend, take him away from everything. It's as if he's in the presence of someone like that, someone who can fly and lose his shadow. Someone who will have to be taught what a kiss is.   
  
"Why would you like it?" Pavel asks, smiling shakily. "Listening to all these horrible things?"   
  
"Because you want to tell me," Hikaru says. "I think," he adds quietly, embarrassed by this presumption. Pavel is staring at him, looking suddenly like he might cry, his brow pinched a bit and his lips parted.   
  
"Yes," he says, very softly, and the air in the room changes, filling with static, everything suddenly too charged up. Hikaru is afraid that sparks will snap against his skin if he moves.   
  
"I'd better get to sleep," he says. Pavel nods, and moves from the futon as if he's underwater, or asleep already.   
  
"Yes," he says again, differently now, and heads for the door. Hikaru gets up and follows him there, already regretting that he has to leave. He thinks of letting Pavel sleep here, with him, but that's ridiculous, unless Pavel wants to let Hikaru lick those grains of sugar from the corner of his mouth, and Hikaru is relatively sure that he doesn't. Pavel needs rest and reflection and to grow up a bit more. Hikaru needs to stop looking at him and imagining the softness of his skin between his scars.   
  
"Thank you for listening to me talk," Pavel says when he's halfway out the door, lingering.   
  
"You don't have to thank me," Hikaru says. They're almost the same height. Hikaru could just kiss him. It would be as easy as opening a hatch and watching the bomb fall, waiting for the cloud of destruction to bloom. He's never kissed another man before, but from the ages of fourteen to seventeen it was all he could think about, the guilt just as sharp as the want. Then came the war.   
  
"Can I come back tomorrow?" Pavel asks. Hikaru's hand is twitching at his side, wanting to stroke down Pavel's cheek, so he shoves it in the pocket of his pants.   
  
"Yeah," Hikaru says. "After dinner."   
  
"You'll teach me more Japanese?"   
  
"Yeah, sure. And you can teach me more Russian."   
  
"Okay," Pavel says, smiling before turning to go. Hikaru shuts the door and then leans against it, again overcome by the feeling that he should go to Pavel and watch over him while he sleeps. As if he's ever been able to protect anyone, and as if Pavel is in danger here, with everything so completely finished, the enemies of the Allies all but wiped from the earth.   
  
He puts out the lantern on the table and lies on the futon with the notebook that he and Pavel wrote their names in resting on his chest. In his dreams it's Pavel lying on his chest, sleeping comfortably, but while Hikaru can feel the weight and warmth of him, when he tries to put his arms around him, there's nothing there.


	3. Chapter 3

Hikaru wakes up to knocking on his door and jerks with fear, as if he'll be caught in bed with Pavel, but it's only the notebook he's sleeping with, his hand spread over the cover. The knocking is timid, and Hikaru hurries himself out of the futon, thinking it must be Pavel, come to walk with him to breakfast. He opens the door to find Jim Kirk standing there instead, looking ashen and half-asleep, heavy bags under his eyes.   
  
"Hey," Jim says. He smiles despite himself, then goes somber again. "Um, hey, Hikaru. I thought maybe you could help me with something. Um. How do you take a shower here?" he asks, quietly and sounding a little panicked.   
  
Hikaru looks at his watch, and thinks of Pavel's father the watchmaker -- even when the world is ending, someone will have appointments to keep. The world has ended, and Hikaru is still expected at breakfast in an hour. That gives him enough time to show a hick from Iowa how to take a bath. He could simply point him toward the hot spring, but Jim would be confused, and Hikaru is actually a little excited about the prospect of feeling like an expert in something for a moment.   
  
The morning is a little cool and the bath is empty, steaming up against the dull pastel sky. Hikaru takes off his shirt in the undressing area, hoping Jim will get the idea, but he just stands there staring at Hikaru and looking forlorn.   
  
"You wash up here," Hikaru says, gesturing to the showers. "Then you can soak in the bath if you want."   
  
"What about shaving?" Jim asks, touching the scruff on his face.   
  
"You can do that up in your room. Just tell the housekeeping girl to bring you some hot water."   
  
"You mean Mai?" Jim asks, and Hikaru nods, embarrassed for not having bothered to learn the girl's name himself. She'd asked for his, after all.   
  
Jim undresses without a second thought, shoving his clothes into a cubicle and washing himself right beside Hikaru, as if he's missed this sort of locker room culture.   
  
"God!" he says, shutting his eyes to let the water spray in his face. "You know I haven't showered since I got here?"   
  
"Is that why you skipped dinner last night, you were afraid you smelled bad?" Hikaru asks. He hurries to rinse off and heads for the bath. Jim has the kind of ridiculously big cock that anyone would stare at, and it's making Hikaru uncomfortable.   
  
"Well, partly," Jim says, turning the shower off. Hikaru slips into the water and Jim follows, hissing at the heat. Like Pavel, he sits too close, but this time Hikaru scoots away a little.   
  
"It's just so fucking sad," Jim says. "To see people -- kids -- starving to death, and then come back here and eat steak? I don't know."   
  
"Are you going to be a monk now, then?" Hikaru asks. "No more food until world hunger ends?"   
  
"There's just nothing I can do," Jim says, staring out at the mountains in the distance. "It's all over, and I felt like I'd done something before, saved something, but now I don't know. I mean I saved something, yeah, but there's still this."   
  
"Can't save everyone," Hikaru says. Jim snorts.   
  
"I know that," he says. "It's just hard to see it up close."   
  
"Do you wish you hadn't come?" Hikaru asks.   
  
"No." Jim frowns. "Which is weird."   
  
"Hmm." Hikaru knows the feeling, actually. He wonders if Spock will try to round everyone up and force them to talk about their emotional experience here before the mission is over. Hopefully not.   
  
"Had you been here before?" Jim asks.   
  
"No," Hikaru says. "Too expensive. My grandparents still live up in Hokkaido, though."   
  
"Are they okay?"   
  
"Yeah, of course they're okay. It's a whole other island."   
  
"I know," Jim says, though Hikaru gets the feeling he didn't before just now. "But do they have food and stuff? I mean, times are hard."   
  
"Times have been hard for awhile, for them. They're fine. My mother's family is probably doing a little better, but my dad's people, they're the type who don't trust good fortune, anyway. They like having something to complain about."   
  
"My grandparents are that way, too," Jim says, smiling. "My mom's folks, I mean. Farmers, you know, they could find a pot of gold and it would just be a reason to bitch about getting taxed for it."   
  
Hikaru laughs. "I've actually never met my grandparents," he says. "But I feel like I know them, just from their letters, and my parents' stories, a few pictures."   
  
"So are you gonna see them while you're here?" Jim asks.   
  
"No."   
  
"What? Why not? We'll get some leave time, eventually."   
  
"Yeah, but. Things the way they are, it would probably take three days to get up there."   
  
"So? Just talk to Pike, he'll --"   
  
"Anyway, I don't want to," Hikaru says. Jim stares at him, but Hikaru doesn't look back, not in the mood to weather his shocked expression. "It'd be too strange, seeing them now. After everything."   
  
"Everything?" Jim says, and just when Hikaru was beginning to maybe like him a little, he's back to being an idiot again.   
  
"Yeah, everything," Hikaru says tightly. "Namely me serving in the American military while they kept my family locked up and nuked their country."   
  
"I was kind of wondering about that," Jim says. He smirks, and Hikaru can't tell if it's smug or apologetic, or both. "Why'd you do it? I mean, being that you're -- you know."   
  
"I thought things would be easier for my family if I did," Hikaru says, speaking as sharply as he did when he gave this reason to his father. "But it didn't make any difference. For them." He doesn't say that it did make things easier for him, that he got away, at least physically. In every other sense, he was still interned. But they're free now, and here he is.   
  
"Your pop a military man?" Jim asks.   
  
"No," Hikaru says. "He's a mortician." He's never been proud to say that before, and he's not sure why he is now.   
  
"Man, seriously? My dad was Navy, too. Pretty much every Kirk man in history has been. He died when my mom was pregnant with me, volunteering over in Europe, you know, the first war."   
  
"Sorry," Hikaru says. He's tired of apologizing, and for a moment he understands how Jim feels, standing in a circle of wreckage, helpless to do anything about it and lacking any illusions about the world ever changing for the better.   
  
"It's okay," Jim says with a shrug. "I mean, it ain't, but. I just wish I could have known him for awhile."   
  
He and Jim stay in the bath long enough to almost be late for breakfast, and by the time they get out and towel off Hikaru still hasn't decided if he likes Jim or not, but when he shows up to breakfast with Jim, who is now clean-shaven and smiling around at everyone stupidly, he's glad for it, because Pavel was worried, and Hikaru did something about it. He sits beside Pavel, who gives him a little grin and pats his knee under the table.   
  
"There you are, Hikaru," he says, as if he had been worried about Hikaru, too, and Hikaru forgets to feel guilty about eating breakfast.   
  
The day is long in a way that makes Hikaru's stomach ache. He travels with Spock and Uhura to the southernmost parts of the city, which are all but decimated, shanty towns lining the empty streets. Military personnel drive past but don't stop to smoke on street corners or look for surviving noodle shops. Spock has Hikaru interview a group of people who are organizing a vegetable garden in a dirt lot that used to contain an apartment building. For the first time, Hikaru thinks about the coming winter.   
  
"Will the American aid be stepped up when it gets cold here?" he asks Spock and Uhura on the way back to the inn, as if they know.   
  
"That would be the logical conclusion, Lieutenant," Spock says.   
  
"How much logic have you seen here so far?" Uhura mutters.   
  
"Not a great deal," Spock says.   
  
Back at the inn, Hikaru looks for Pike's Jeep, but they must still be at the blast site. He goes to his room and lies on his stomach, the notebook he and Pavel wrote in the night before open in front of him. He reads over what they wrote and then practices writing in Cyrillic, imitating Pavel's neat little geometric letters. He feels strange, suspended in mid-air but not as afraid as he should be. When Pavel's knock comes, he knows for sure that it's him this time.   
  
"Dr. Scott wants to go out and eat at a restaurant tonight," Pavel says in lieu of a greeting. "You will come?"   
  
"Sure," Hikaru says, though he's kind of disappointed that Dr. Scott will be along, because it means that Pavel will be embroiled in arguments about physics for the entire evening. "Anyone else coming?"   
  
"Yes, Jim is going to come and he wants to bring Dr. McCoy along as well, but I do not know if he will convince him."   
  
Pavel walks into Hikaru's room like it's already half his, and Hikaru hurries ahead of him to close up the notebook so that Pavel won't see the evidence that Hikaru has been lying around and thinking about him.   
  
"When do we leave?" Hikaru asks, holding the notebook at his side. Pavel grins.   
  
"In half an hour, I think. I told Dr. Scott to retrieve me from your room. I think you will like him if you talk to him for a bit."   
  
"Oh, I don't know." Hikaru goes to the table and sets the notebook down. He wishes he had something to drink, but there's only hot water for tea, brought by Mai. "I don't like most people."   
  
"This is true of me also, but I do think you will like Mr. Scott," Pavel says, and he frowns when Hikaru laughs. "What is funny?" he asks, quickly to Hikaru's side, leaning around his shoulder to peer at his face.   
  
"You do like most people," Hikaru says, grinning at him. "C'mon."   
  
"I don't! Why do you think I do?"   
  
"Because -- I don't know, Jim, McCoy, Dr. Scott -- you even defended Spock!"   
  
"Well, okay, but the people here, on this mission -- they are better people than most I have met."   
  
Hikaru wants to hear Pavel say _mee-sion_ at least a hundred times more, but he just grins, feeling dazed, until Pavel shoves his shoulder, grinning back.   
  
"Fine, I do not think it's true, either," Pavel says. "That you don't like most people."   
  
"Oh, it's true."   
  
"No, no. Then why have you been so kind to me?" Pavel asks, and Hikaru starts to laugh, but then it seems like a serious question, as if Pavel really thinks Hikaru has been especially kind, and maybe he has, but his intentions aren't entirely noble. Or, they are -- but they're not -- it's complicated.   
  
"You're the exception," Hikaru says, and then he's afraid to look at Pavel, because he's not sure what he just said or what it means. Pavel doesn't make him explain. He eases the notebook from Hikaru's hand and opens it, flipping through the pages.   
  
"You'll have to order for us at the restaurant," Pavel says.   
  
"Yeah." Hikaru watches him with the notebook nervously, trying to remember if he wrote anything incriminating in there. It suddenly seems like he did.   
  
"Just don't order anything too crazy for me, okay?" Pavel says, looking up at Hikaru with a grin, and Hikaru's ability to believe that anything really bad has ever happened anywhere leaves him like a waning fever. He wonders if Pavel is a spy, sent by Russian intelligence to seduce him. But Hikaru doesn't know anybody's secrets, not anymore, now that the bombs have been detonated.   
  
"How about dumplings, then?" Hikaru says. He's sweating a little, actually wanting Dr. Scott to come pound on the door. It's never been like this with another man. He's never felt guiltily hopeful.   
  
"Okay, dumplings, yes," Pavel says with a nod. Hikaru feels too heavy to keep standing upright, but there's nowhere to sit except the bed. He's got a jumble of mostly nonsensical words stuck in his throat and none of them are going to do him any good if he lets them out.   
  
"How was your work today?" Pavel asks, and Hikaru appreciates the safe question.   
  
"They've planted a vegetable garden in the city, by the train station," Hikaru says.   
  
"What kind of vegetables?" Pavel asks. He's not humoring Hikaru or making conversation, he really wants to know. It sits in Hikaru like a stone in his chest, Pavel's earnest curiosity, making Hikaru feel even heavier, nailed to the earth while Pavel seems to drift weightlessly around him.   
  
It's dark outside by the time they're wandering the streets with McCoy, Jim, and Dr. Scott, looking for an operational restaurant that isn't just a greasy noodle counter full of Marines. They find one on the outskirts of the financial district, on an otherwise deserted street, one red lantern bobbing in the wind and catching Hikaru's eye. The restaurant is dark and quiet, though relatively busy considering the circumstances, and it's decorated as if it had once been quite fancy. The only thing on the current menu is hot pots, but there is still an air of snobbishness about the place, and Hikaru's friends -- coworkers -- are the only white men in the dining room. They get a few looks, but the service is professional and their business is clearly appreciated.   
  
"What is this?" Dr. Scott asks, lifting a steaming white vegetable from his pot.   
  
"Bamboo shoot," Hikaru says. "Try it," he says when Dr. Scott makes a face.   
  
"I've never heard of a Scotsman who had the nerve to complain about foreign cuisine," McCoy mutters.   
  
"You're Scottish?" Jim asks, cocking his head at Dr. Scott. Hikaru has to choke down a laugh; he thought the accent was pretty obvious.   
  
"That's right," Dr. Scott says. "Been in New York since the thirties, but I'll be damned if I'll have anyone calling me American. No offense," he adds with a grin.   
  
"Are many people mistaking you for a local?" McCoy asks, elbowing Hikaru to get his attention.   
  
"No," Hikaru says, scoffing. "I expect the uniform tips them off."   
  
"Out of uniform, I mean," McCoy says, giving him a look.   
  
"I haven't really been anywhere out of uniform," Hikaru says. He and Jim are both in their dress khakis as usual. Hikaru didn't really bring much in the way of street clothes. He glances over at Pavel, who is still wearing the same Oxford, wool pants and tweed jacket, which might be the only clothes he owns. Hikaru wonders if they pay him only room and board at Berkeley.   
  
"I could use you at the medical tents if the head shrinker and his lovely assistant could spare you for a day," McCoy says to Hikaru. "It's tough trying to help these people -- or make notes -- without being able to understand a damn word they're saying."   
  
"Fine," Hikaru says, thinking he'll at least be able to ride most of the way in the Jeep with Pavel if he submits himself to the hell of the medical camp. "I'll talk to Spock about it."   
  
"To hell with that pointy-nosed kraut, I'll talk to Pike," McCoy says.   
  
"You don't like Dr. Spock?" Jim asks, smiling a little.   
  
"I don't have time for his particular brand of quackery, and frankly I'm pretty surprised that the Navy is interested in anything he has to say." McCoy is drinking sake, wincing at the bottle with every sip, not as if it's too strong but as if he finds it to be a poor substitute for whiskey.   
  
"You do not believe that psychology is a valuable science?" Pavel asks.   
  
"Science!" McCoy bellows. "Did you hear me call it a science? It's a lot of fantastical nonsense and every bastard who makes a living conning people with it knows it. They sent Spock here to find out how people are feeling after having a couple of large holes blown in their country? I could have told you from Macon, Georgia exactly how they're feeling, no need for interviews. Exhausted, depressed, doomed, hopeless, angry -- fine. More than any of that, they're hungry. The Navy could take whatever they're paying Spock and his little girlfriend and put it toward rations and they'd be doing humanity a much greater service. But!" McCoy lifts his chopsticks, spraying broth onto Jim's sleeve. "Nobody asked me."   
  
After the hot pots are cleared away, the heavy drinking begins, and though Hikaru has never been especially fond of beer, it seems to taste different when he's finally drinking it with people who are treating him like a peer, like one of the group, laughing at his stupid jokes about Spock's accent. Pavel is the only one who stays relatively quiet, though he's drinking quite a lot, maybe more than Hikaru.   
  
"Hey, if anyone is wondering how to take a shower in this country," Jim shouts across the table at one point. "Hikaru showed me this morning. So just ask him." Jim slings his arm around Hikaru's shoulders and grins obliviously while the others burst into laughter.   
  
On the way back to the inn McCoy and Dr. Scott are making a spectacle of themselves, singing some Scottish folk song -- apparently McCoy is Scottish, too, once he's had enough to drink -- and Jim walks between them, laughing and trying to keep up with the lyrics. Pavel and Hikaru bring up the rear, Pavel steadying Hikaru when he stumbles.   
  
"I don't usually drunk much," Hikaru says. He shakes his head, wincing. "I mean, drink." Pavel grins and takes Hikaru's arm, pulling him away from the gutter.   
  
"Your head will be bad in the morning," he says. Hikaru scoffs, waving a clumsy hand through the air.   
  
"It usually is anyway," he says.   
  
"You have chronic headaches?" Pavel asks with a concerned frown, and Hikaru laughs, his head tipping back until he can see the cloudless sky. No stars.   
  
"No, I mean it's bad, you know, my head." He squints, trying to find the right words. The air feels slippery and the singing of the others is beginning to needle at him.   
  
"I'm not a good person," Hikaru says. "Not like you, I wake up with a bad head, you know, I wake up and remember everything."   
  
"You won't remember everything tomorrow morning," Pavel says, smiling. Hikaru snorts, leaning on him.   
  
"Good," he says.   
  
But he can't forget, even now, almost too drunk to stand. When they walk past the subway station there's a faint scuttling as people shrink away from the sound of their footsteps, crowding whatever possessions they've managed to hang on to or steal into their arms. Hikaru wants to tell Dr. Spock that he doesn't feel anything for these people, nothing more than anyone else who walked past them while they slept on filthy sidewalks would. But Dr. Spock isn't asking him how he feels. No one but Pavel has so far. It's funny that this is probably what made Pavel Hikaru's favorite, because it's not the sort of question he usually appreciates.   
  
They get back to the inn and Pavel walks Hikaru into his room, reminding Hikaru to take his boots off when Hikaru forgets, which makes Hikaru laugh until Pavel has to shush him. Hikaru feels elephantine around Pavel, who seems firefly-like to Hikaru in the moment, glowing in the dark and effortlessly light, at Hikaru's side and then blinking across the room to dip a washcloth in a basin of cold water by the table. Hikaru collapses onto his back on the futon, hoping Pavel won't leave, that he'll keep floating around the room while Hikaru sleeps, the soft light of him blinking from random corners.   
  
"Here," Pavel says, laying the cloth over Hikaru's forehead. "You have sweat."   
  
"You're sweaty," Hikaru corrects, but he said it in Japanese, so he just laughs at himself. Pavel sits by Hikaru's shoulder on the bed, and the way the futon shifts under Pavel's weight is what Hikaru needs more than anything, another person moving on his mattress.   
  
"Say something to me in Russian," Hikaru says, his eyes closed and the cool cloth across his forehead almost as good as having Pavel touch him. Pavel sighs and lies down on his back beside Hikaru. He does as Hikaru asked, speaking Russian, sounding sad.   
  
"What did you say?" Hikaru asks.   
  
"You did not tell me I would have to translate," Pavel says. He rolls toward Hikaru, who keeps his eyes shut, though he can feel the heat of Pavel's body, just barely separate from his, and he wants to look at him, but that would make what is happening to him, this man in his bed, too real.   
  
"So say something in Japanese for me," Pavel says. He reaches over -- Hikaru can feel it, the reaching -- and wraps his smaller hand around Hikaru's thumb. It's like being pushed over a cliff, but Hikaru doesn't move.   
  
"I could die like this and be perfectly happy," Hikaru says in Japanese, keeping his eyes shut. "They could drop another bomb and I wouldn't care. When I die I want you beside me, holding my thumb just like that."   
  
His heart is pounding when he finishes speaking, as if he said all of this in a language Pavel will understand. Pavel lets go of Hikaru's thumb, and Hikaru opens his eyes to stare at the ceiling.   
  
"Do you want me to leave so that you can sleep?" Pavel asks. Hikaru is afraid to look at him. He's tired of being afraid of everything all the time. It started with the dead people in his house when he was a little boy, and it hasn't really stopped.   
  
"Don't go," Hikaru says. "Stay here. You can sleep here, I've got enough room."   
  
"You wouldn't want me sleeping here," Pavel says. "I wake up sometimes."   
  
"I don't care." That's what Hikaru wants, really, for Pavel to wake up frightened and cling to him. Hikaru wants to close his whole body around Pavel's and hide him against his chest, as if he inherited his mother's talent for comfort.   
  
"I would care," Pavel says. "If I woke you up."   
  
"Fine, go," Hikaru grumbles, shutting his eyes again. Pavel doesn't move, and finally Hikaru has to turn and look at him. His eyes are so big and so quietly sad. Hikaru wants to climb into them and live in the world only as Pavel perceives it.   
  
"When I was in Majdanek we were all crammed together, sleeping, and nobody woke up," Pavel says. "It's strange. Maybe we were too exhausted to dream. I think everyone who left that place must be dreaming all the time, now."   
  
"I had a dream about you last night." Hikaru did not intend to say that in English, but it's too late now.   
  
"What was I doing in your dream?" Pavel asks, as if this is important information, the sort he was sent to seduce out of Hikaru.   
  
"Nothing. Sleeping. You were here in my room." Hikaru hopes to God that neither of them remembers any of this in the morning. His head is already beginning to hurt.   
  
"Ah, so you want me to sleep here now so that you can think this was a prophetic dream?" Pavel asks. He's always turning the conversation kindly away from Hikaru's strangeness.   
  
"You were so quiet tonight," Hikaru says, hating the half-asleep slur of his voice. "Did you have a good time?"   
  
"Yes, I suppose. I don't agree with Dr. McCoy about psychology."   
  
Hikaru is pleased by this, though he actually agrees with McCoy himself, and was very endeared to the man when he ranted against head shrinkers.   
  
"They haven't tried sending you to a shrink, have they?" Hikaru asks.   
  
"Who is 'they,' Hikaru?"   
  
"I don't know. The folks at Berkeley. Listen, you should tell me about them. I want to hear all about your life."   
  
"I want to hear about yours, too," Pavel says, laughing a little. He's so, so close; Hikaru could fake a yawn as an excuse to shift against him.   
  
"I don't have a life anymore," Hikaru says. "I can't remember the last time I did. When I was in school, I guess."   
  
"Yes, this is the same for me."   
  
"Fucking 1942, right?"   
  
"Right. You know that the hardest thing for me to say in English was always the years? Then I started talking about the war."   
  
"Do you ever think that you never want to talk about the fucking war ever again?" Hikaru asks. He feels as if he should grab Pavel and hold him by the shoulders as he says this, but he just lies there like a corpse, Pavel leaning beside him.   
  
"I think that every day," Pavel says. He sounds excited to tell Hikaru so. "I think I will stop telling these same stories to everyone, but then I do it anyway. I hear myself saying these things over and over and I get so angry."   
  
"At least you're honest. All I ever do is lie."   
  
"I don't think you've lied to me," Pavel says. Hikaru looks up at him, and he's waiting for an answer. Hikaru isn't sure if he's lied to Pavel directly, but the fact that he's not swinging a leg around Pavel's side and flattening him against the futon with kisses is another kind of lie, the one he's always telling without needing to speak.   
  
"Tell me about your life at Berkeley," Hikaru says. "What's it like?"   
  
Pavel is quiet for a moment. His fingers are moving on the bedsheets like they moved across Hikaru's knee the night before, absentminded and directionless.   
  
"Lonely," Pavel says.   
  
"No, okay, but I mean, tell me how you spend your days. What you eat for breakfast. Walk me through it."   
  
"Walk you through it?" Pavel laughs as if he's charmed by this expression. "Maybe when we are finished here I will have you as a guest at Berkeley, and you can see my breakfast for yourself."   
  
"Yeah." Hikaru shuts his eyes, smiling. "Hell, maybe I'll enroll." He laughs.   
  
"Don't you want to attend university when you're finished with your service in the Navy?" Pavel asks.   
  
"Can't afford it," Hikaru says. He thinks of the life that is waiting for him when he returns home: the funeral parlor, his position as assistant director, everything he temporarily escaped from when the war began.   
  
"Then what will you do?" Pavel asks. Hikaru doesn't want to lie, but he can't tell Pavel the truth, that he'll just slouch back into the life he's been handed, the things he should be grateful for.   
  
"I'll come visit you," Hikaru says. Pavel doesn't press any further. He slides down onto the futon and sighs.   
  
"I hope you'll come with us tomorrow," Pavel says. "To help Dr. McCoy. If you want to."   
  
"I will, if Pike will let me."   
  
"I should go to bed," Pavel says, rubbing at his eyes. "And you, you will not feel so well in the morning."   
  
"You could sleep here," Hikaru says. "You already look like you're ready to drop."   
  
"Ready to drop," Pavel says, letting his eyes slide shut. It takes every inch of willpower Hikaru has not to reach over and touch Pavel's face as his features relax into sleep. Everything about him is amazing in a way that Hikaru thought nothing ever would be. The fuzz on his ear, illuminated in the light from the room's lantern, the choppy spikes of his hair, the freckles dusted across the bridge of his nose. And that's not even the half of it. Hikaru was serious; he wants to hear every detail, he wants to know how Pavel takes his coffee and how many steps there are between his apartment and the school building where he builds bombs and philosophizes about scientific imperialism.   
  
Hikaru falls asleep against his will. When he wakes up, Pavel is gone, and there is a folded sheet of paper from the notebook in the warm indention he left behind on the futon. Hikaru rolls onto his back and unfolds the paper, blinking up at it and bringing it closer to his face so he can read what Pavel wrote:   
  
_Going back to my room. Keep having dreams about me sleeping and I will dream about you asleep as well. Goodnight Hikaru._   
  
Something about the way Pavel wrote Hikaru's name makes him smile so hard that he's afraid his face will break open and turn into someone else's, that he'll forget how to do anything but this, pathetically clutching a sheet of paper to his chest while he grins at the ceiling. This is the danger inherent in these situations; he understands now. For better or worse, it's big enough to wipe everything else away.   
  
*   
  
Days pass, then weeks. The country's mood of disoriented relief mixed with hopeless gloom stays the same, and whether he's in the ruins of the city with Spock and Uhura or the cacophony of the medical outpost with Jim and McCoy, Hikaru feels like he's wandering deaf and blind through a dust storm until he returns to the inn, washes his face with hot water brought by Mai, and sits on his futon waiting for Pavel to show up.   
  
They've fallen into a routine that makes the grime-coated chaos of their work much less overwhelming. In the morning, Hikaru meets Pavel, and sometimes Jim, downstairs for a bath. Sometimes they soak long enough to miss breakfast, the water up to their chins and the colorless little birds that hop around the rocky landscape of the bath beginning to make their morning noises. Hikaru and Pavel talk about the dreams they had during the night. Hikaru usually censors his, or laughs as if he didn't wake in sweats, panting with fear. He keeps dreaming that he finds his family living here in this ruined country, starving and dirty and shouting at him for not knowing that they were here all along. He gets the feeling that Pavel isn't being completely honest about his dreams, either.   
  
"I'm always in a submarine," Pavel says. "I think it must be awful, closed up under the water like that. You're lucky, being in the Navy, that you never had to live on one."   
  
After hearing about Pavel's submarine-related nightmares, Hikaru begins to dream that he's swimming in a lake back in California, desperately trying to dive deep enough to reach a submarine that is sitting on the bottom, its slimy massiveness terrifying to behold. He never gets anywhere close.   
  
"You guys don't have dreams about getting bombed?" Jim asks them one morning when he's joined them. "I have that dream nearly every night since I got here, that the Americans decide to drop another one and I'm standing in the middle of that field with all the medical tents and there's nothing I can do but watch it fall."   
  
"What would Spock say about that one?" Hikaru asks, elbowing Pavel under the water.   
  
"Mmm, something to do with guilt," Pavel says. "And anxiety about the mission."   
  
"You know what Spock said to me the other day?" Jim asks. "I tried to offer him a smoke and he said cigarettes were a substitute for sucking on your mother's tit. An oral fixation. You believe that shit? I asked him if he was out of his mind and Uhura laughed. I think she likes me a little, I don't know."   
  
"No, I think she is -- romantically involved with Dr. Spock," Pavel says. "I saw him touch her chin."   
  
"Touch her chin? How do you mean?" Jim asks, leaning toward Pavel, who laughs.   
  
"In an intimate sort of way," Pavel says, and Hikaru adds _een-ti-mat_ to the list of English words that give him goosebumps when pronounced by Pavel. He's noticed that Pavel has become rather friendly with Spock and Uhura, and he's jealous, both because they seem to have something fundamental in common with Pavel and because the two of them seem to admire Pavel while they only tolerate Hikaru.   
  
After the bath, there's breakfast and either a quick goodbye at the door of the inn or the long Jeep ride down to Hiroshima. Hikaru prefers being with Pavel and Jim, stuffed into the backseat, the lazy bump of the vehicle along the road reminding him of trips with his family as a boy, when his father would make him sit in the back to police his sisters. It's cozy and quickly familiar, the press of Pavel's shoulder against his and the way Jim talks excitedly under his breath while Pike drives, never joining the conversation up front or in back. Hikaru hates the part of the day when he's left with Jim and McCoy at the tents, Pavel bouncing away in the Jeep with Pike and Dr. Scott. When the Jeep returns at the end of the day, everyone's mood is quite different. There's no talking on the way back to the inn, and sometimes Pavel falls asleep, his head lolling from Hikaru's shoulder to Jim's as they both stare out their windows, pretending not to notice.   
  
The days with Spock and Uhura are often more depressing than the medical tents; the chaos of the tents is so overwhelming that it doesn't leave Hikaru much time to even think about what he's translating for McCoy, but in the city things move at a slower pace, people wasting away over months rather than days. Eventually, people stop asking Hikaru if he can help them find their lost relatives, as if word has gotten around about him.   
  
"Are you finding what you need?" Hikaru asks Spock one day when he's particularly frustrated, after having interviewed a dazed woman who told him very plainly that her daughter had been 'taken by bandits' weeks earlier.   
  
"What I need?" Spock says, giving Hikaru a puzzled look.   
  
"Yeah, for your study," Hikaru says. He glances at Uhura, who gives him a warning look. She's usually on Hikaru's side, until suddenly she's not, and Hikaru is certain that she and Spock are together after working with them for almost a month. They mercilessly size each other up in a way that makes Hikaru wonder if they're secretly married.   
  
"I had no particular goal coming into this assignment except to observe the behavior of the Japanese public following the surrender of the Emperor," Spock says. "So, yes, Lieutenant, I am finding what I 'need', which is simply the daily opportunity to observe."   
  
"How did you get involved with the Navy, anyway?" Hikaru asks.   
  
"Assisting the United States military was a condition of my emigrating to America," Spock says. He doesn't sound particularly happy about it. "How did you get involved, Lieutenant?" he asks, looking at Hikaru as if he already knows that his answer will be similar.   
  
"Yeah," Hikaru says, muttering. "It was a condition of my freedom, too."   
  
"Freedom is hardly the right word," Uhura says. "And I'm sure it was more complicated than that."   
  
"Well, I was eighteen years old," Hikaru says. "So there was that complication."   
  
"Then you're still so young," Uhura says, her face softening as she touches Hikaru's arm. He frowns in confusion; she doesn't seem much older than him.   
  
"Are you finding what you need here, Lieutenant?" Spock asks, and Hikaru thinks it's an incredibly cruel question until he looks into Spock's face, which is free of accusation or mockery. He's sincerely curious.   
  
"Yeah," Hikaru says, the word falling from his lips at the first thought of Pavel. "I guess I am."   
  
Regardless of which team he works with during the day, Hikaru is always holding his breath until he can return to the inn and have time to talk with Pavel alone after dinners with the group that often feel excruciatingly long. Pavel never fails to come to Hikaru's room after dinner, usually waiting ten or fifteen minutes instead of walking with him from the dining room. Hikaru can only presume that he does this because he doesn't want the others to get the wrong idea about them. Whether this means that Pavel himself has the same idea Hikaru does is unclear, but it's enough just to be alone with Pavel, and to be left to sink into the futon with his fantasies afterward. In a strange way, Hikaru almost looks forward to Pavel's departure at the end of the night, so that he can concentrate on the thoughts he has to push away when Pavel is there beside him. Though he's aware that it's pathetic, he does take a kind of unbridled pleasure in being alone in the room just after Pavel has left, free to obsess over the thought of tasting Pavel's skin, his lips, his cock, his come. It's a mind-melting diversion, but after he's finished, even while his cock is still twitching through the last waves of his orgasm, he wants Pavel back, to lean at his side and lick away the drops of sweat that roll down from Hikaru's temples. This is what he feels most guilty about, because in the aftermath he's not satisfied with his dreams; he wants the real Pavel to know him like this, weak with pleasure and needing to be held.   
  
"Did you have a girlfriend back home?" Hikaru asks Pavel one night. They're on the futon as usual, lying on their stomachs like children. Hikaru has been teaching Pavel how to fold cranes. Pavel is much clumsier with his hands than Hikaru expected; he has long fingers but the ends are fattish and rounded, his nails bitten back and raw-looking.   
  
"A girlfriend?" Pavel asks, as if he's never heard the term, though Hikaru is sure he must know the meaning. "No. Have you?"   
  
"No," Hikaru says. "Nobody wants to date the mortician's son in America."   
  
"So you were chasing girls and they were saying no to you?"   
  
"No, I didn't chase anybody. Everyone in my neighborhood, before the internment, they thought of me as the other half of Meiko. I was expected to chaperone her and her friends when they went to the pictures to see the guys they were interested in."   
  
"You went right from school into the war," Pavel says. He rolls onto his back and holds his most successful attempt at a crane up over his face. "Like me."   
  
"Yeah. Not much time for girls."   
  
"You will make time when you get back?" Pavel says. He's still watching his crane, as if he's expecting it to fly out of his fingers.   
  
"I don't know," Hikaru says. "To be honest, I don't like to think about going back too much. It's hard to imagine what my life will be like after this -- interlude." Actually, it's too easy to imagine: it will be his father's life. His parents will arrange a marriage to some dour girl who won't object to marrying into a bad luck family that lives with the dead. He'll have daughters who will dote on him condescendingly as his sisters do with his father. He'll get quiet like the old man, forgetting both languages and only waving his hand through the air like he's swatting flies in response to most topics of conversation.   
  
"I don't like to think of it, either," Pavel says. He's lying on his side now. Hikaru both loves and hates the way Pavel flops about like a puppy on the futon. It makes him nervous, but he's glad that Pavel feels so comfortable with him, especially because he's often quiet and stiff-shouldered among the others.   
  
"But you'll go back to your life as a brilliant scientist," Hikaru says. "God, I wish I had that."   
  
"You still could!" Pavel says, squeezing Hikaru's arm. "You could come to my university, maybe you could get a scholarship, you could study anything you like --"   
  
"What exactly gives you the impression that I'm smart?" Hikaru asks, laughing. He was a good student and did well in high school, but none of his teachers encouraged him to apply to college, and while Meiko told him that it was only because they knew he couldn't afford it, Hikaru knows he's not exactly brilliant and suspects that his teachers recognized this in him.   
  
"Don't be ridiculous," Pavel says. "Of course you are smart."   
  
"Why, because I can speak two languages by default? How many can you speak?"   
  
Pavel hesitates for a moment, frowning. "Four, well, five if you include Latin, but that --"   
  
"See, I'm behind already."   
  
"I think you would do well," Pavel says. He rolls onto his back again, the crane still tucked between his fingers.   
  
"Why?" Hikaru asks, trying not to give away how badly he wants a real answer to this question. He's been wondering since the first day here why Pavel looks at him with awe and respect. It can't just be because he fell asleep on the damn plane.   
  
"Because you're intelligent and hard-working," Pavel says. Hikaru grunts as if to disagree.   
  
"You just want me there at Berkeley to fold cranes for you," he says, picking up one of the ones he did. It's crisp and perfect; he spent much of his childhood sitting miserably among his sisters, folding cranes for funeral displays.   
  
"It's true," Pavel says, and when Hikaru dares a look at him he's smiling so sweetly that for a moment Hikaru actually feels guilty for not kissing him. "I do want that."   
  
"What would I study?" Hikaru asks, barely able to hear the words over the sudden rush of his heartbeat.   
  
"Physics!" Pavel says, beaming. "They are wanting me to teach a class next semester, you could sit in the front row."   
  
"No, I don't like that theoretical stuff," Hikaru says. "When I was a kid I used to gather specimens. Leaves and flowers and sometimes bugs, but I'd always feel guilty when the bugs died." He laughs, though one of his most painful childhood memories is finding a beautiful praying mantis he'd captured dead in his jar one morning, despite the holes he'd poked in the top for air and the leaves he'd stuffed in there for food.   
  
"So you can study biology," Pavel says. "You can cure diseases."   
  
"Oh, sure. I doubt I'd do anything that useful. I'd just hide my face in books, looking at pictures of orchids."   
  
"And folding cranes for me," Pavel says. He picks up one of Hikaru's cranes and holds it up beside his own. "Yours look like they belong in a museum."   
  
"Cranes are easy," Hikaru says. He turns onto his back and looks up at the cranes; Pavel's hands have begun to shake with the effort of holding them up. "There is some origami in museums, really amazing stuff, but anyone can do cranes, it just takes practice."   
  
"You should take me to a museum," Pavel says dreamily, bringing the cranes down to sit on his chest. "I want to see some of this country, not just that empty gray field."   
  
"I should take you to Kyoto," Hikaru says, his heart still pounding. "On my leave days next week. It's supposed to be pretty untouched, even by the war. Lots of temples."   
  
"Okay, yes," Pavel says, and the softness of his voice, in those two words, makes Hikaru shudder. He shakes his head, telling himself to stop thinking that this might turn into something he can keep. He'll never go to Berkeley. He'll never see Pavel again after this mission, and even if he did, in America, it would be different. Pavel would have no reason to come to his room in the middle of the night and to stay until neither of them can keep their eyes open any longer, his own room just a stumble away.   
  
"What will you tell them in your report?" Hikaru asks when his eyes begin to droop. This is always when he's closest to being honest, hardly caring what would happen next if he could just roll onto Pavel and bury his face against his neck for half a second.   
  
"I will tell them that their weapon did what it was designed to do," Pavel says. "You know, they call it 'the experiment.'"   
  
"That's funny," Hikaru says, though of course it isn't. "The experiment. Like the internment. Like 'concentration.' Ha ha."   
  
"You shouldn't give up on people," Pavel says.   
  
"Why the hell not?"   
  
"Because," Pavel says. He holds the cranes up again, into the glow from the lantern on the table. "I did, and then I met you."   
  
"Me?" Hikaru laughs, and then feels guilty, because Pavel's face is so serious. "Well, okay," he says. "You make me -- think -- yeah. The same thing. Or, no, but -- this is enough, just, just one person."   
  
"Hikaru," Pavel says, lightly, as if he's talking to some other, better version of Hikaru who articulated that properly. He rolls up onto his elbows and sets the cranes amongst their brethren, in a sea of them that Hikaru made in nervous succession while Pavel struggled to make three, his tongue poking from between his lips while he concentrated.   
  
"Sorry," Hikaru says, and then he's not sure what he's apologizing for, his cheeks burning.   
  
"It's better to say too much than nothing at all," Pavel says, smiling at the cranes. He's really looking at nothing, his eyes glazed in that otherworldly way that Hikaru has never seen on anyone else. "My mother used to say that."   
  
"That's funny," Hikaru says. "My mother says the exact opposite. You'll never regret what you didn't say."   
  
"Maybe that's true," Pavel says, still staring at the cranes. His mouth is hanging open as if he's going to continue, and Hikaru waits, but then Pavel presses his lips together and turns to smile tightly at him.   
  
_Just tell me what you want and I'll do it_. For half a second Hikaru thinks he's actually said this out loud, and he knows he would regret it, so he only says goodnight when Pavel crawls up from the futon and leaves. When he's gone, Hikaru sleeps fitfully, and he dreams that Pavel grows wings and flies away without looking back.


	4. Chapter 4

The day before Hikaru plans to take Pavel to Kyoto is not a good one. He's assigned to the medical tents, where he watches a nine year old boy McCoy has been monitoring since his arrival die from complications related to scurvy, and proceeds to spend the rest of the day competing with McCoy for who can handle the loss more poorly. McCoy snaps at Hikaru and Hikaru mutters awful things in Japanese, like You're not good enough for this job and What do you care, you probably volunteered to open the hatch over Hiroshima, you think people are trash. He realizes around the time that the Jeep arrives to take them back to Yamaguchi that he's been saying these things to himself, not the doctor. Pavel stares at Hikaru in the Jeep, obviously sensing his mood. His concern only annoys Hikaru further, and when they reach the inn Hikaru walks to his room without looking back at Pavel, who follows him there without a word.

"Can I come in?" Pavel asks when Hikaru nearly shuts the door in his face.

"Why?" Hikaru asks, walking from the door without waiting for an answer. Pavel slips inside, and even the softness with which he shuts the door is infuriating. Hikaru has been holding his breath waiting for something to happen between them, something that can't ever happen, something he doesn't even want, because it would ruin everything. But he does want it, he wants Pavel always in his bed and at his side, he wants to hold Pavel's hand and kiss the crown of his head and fuck him so hard they both forget their names. Pavel's proximity is starting to feel cruel, a thing that is always only slightly out of reach, and Hikaru is beginning to wish that Pavel would just leave him the fuck alone already.

"Are you alright?" Pavel asks when Hikaru walks to the window to stare down at the bath, which is already filling up with American soldiers who will get drunk there before they stumble down the hill to town, to the whorehouses, to fuck sixteen-year-old girls as if they're doing them a favor. His hands are curled into fists at his sides, and when a rational part of him reminds him that he's on the verge of some kind of breakdown and intentionally working himself into a rage, he stamps down on it and pushes everything rational away. He wants to break things. Part of him thought he'd get the chance when he went to war, but the Navy only gave him things to put back together, broken pieces of conversations and code.

"Hikaru," Pavel says, and he's got some nerve, saying Hikaru's name that way, as if he deserves something from him, an explanation, as if they've known each other for years. That's how it's begun to feel, but Hikaru knows it's all temporary, just a tiny flash of bittersweet happiness before the aimless mess of all the disappointments still to come.

"I've got to get out of here," Hikaru says, pulling the shades down over the windows.

"Out of where?" Pavel asks, following him when he walks across the room.

"I don't know," Hikaru says. "This fucking place --"

"Hikaru, what happened?"

"And you," Hikaru says, whirling on Pavel, because the room is small and he's got no place to go. Pavel's eyes are wide with concern that slips into fear when Hikaru grabs him by the shirt and pins him to the wall. Pavel reaches up to hold Hikaru's wrists, and it's more reassurance than resistance, which makes Hikaru whine helplessly, because there's no way Pavel isn't going to tear him down, it's been happening since that first day in the bath.

"You," Hikaru says, shoving at Pavel's shoulders so that he bounces a little against the wall. "You, goddamn you." Pavel's eyes have gotten wet, so Hikaru's do, too, because they're tied together, and he's going to be nothing but terrified until those strings are cut.

"Fuck," Hikaru says, shaking his head. He leans in to touch the tip of his nose against Pavel's and feels him trembling like an insect's wing. "Just what the fuck do you want from me?"

Pavel bites his shaking lip, and Hikaru bends down to lick across it like an apology. He leans back, his heartbeat so out of control that it seems to have nothing to do with him, and searches Pavel's face for a reaction. Pavel blinks a pair of tears down his cheeks and then leans up to kiss Hikaru once on the mouth, his lips still shaking. He slumps back against the wall and grins, then laughs, then kind of sobs and throws his arms around Hikaru's shoulders, kissing him again. Hikaru moans and pulls Pavel against him, licking into the soft heat of his mouth. He's immediately dizzy from it, the ground falling away beneath him as Pavel breathes into his mouth and they kiss each other clumsy and fast, needing it too much to bother with coordination.

"Oh, God, I --" Hikaru tries to say, his eyes closed and his face pressed against Pavel's wet cheek. "I've -- wanted --"

Pavel nods and kisses him again before he can continue, and Hikaru is still a little afraid of himself, full of a rage that has transformed but not cooled. His hands are up under Pavel's shirt when they hear a knock on the door, and they pull apart, breathing hard. Hikaru is half-relieved, but when he has to unwind his arms from Pavel's waist he hates whoever is at the door. Pavel shrinks back into the corner to hide, because it's obvious that he's been kissed, his lips red and wet and his face flushed in a way that makes Hikaru want to tackle him to the floor. Hikaru straightens his hair, wipes his eyes clear and pulls the door open. It's Jim, of course.

"Hey," Jim says, speaking softly, as if Hikaru is a wild animal who might set off by loud noises. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," Hikaru says sharply, wanting to scare him away.

"Rough day," Jim says. He looks pretty downtrodden himself, holding his hat in his hands and turning it between his fingers.

"Yeah," Hikaru says. He can feel Pavel in the room behind him like a brilliant light burning the back of his neck, and he wants Jim gone before he sees the glow. "You need something?"

"Yeah, Pike wants to talk to all of us," Jim says. "Meet in the dining room in ten minutes."

"Fine," Hikaru says, shutting the door. "See you there."

"You sure you don't want some company until then?" Jim asks, and Hikaru sticks his head back out and shrugs.

"That's alright," he says, and then he feels guilty. "Listen, we'll go somewhere for dinner, okay?" He regrets this offer already, but Jim's face brightens. "You, me, and Pavel."

"You seen Pavel around?" Jim asks. "I knocked on his door but he didn't answer."

"No -- but I'll tell him about Pike if I see him," Hikaru says, and he closes the door before Jim can respond. He turns back to Pavel, who is pressed up against the wall, his hands behind his back. He smiles nervously and Hikaru feels as if he's had a bucket of cold water thrown over his head. It's good, because he was out of control, but he doesn't know what to do next.

"Come here," Pavel says softly, and Hikaru walks to him. He places his hands on Pavel's hips, unable to meet his eyes, his face burning. Pavel reaches up to touch Hikaru's cheek, and Hikaru turns to kiss his hand, sighing against his fingertips.

"We have to go downstairs in ten minutes," Hikaru says, sneaking a look at Pavel. The whole room is burning with the sunset, and Hikaru is on the verge of no longer being afraid to be glad to be alive. Pavel leans up to kiss him and Hikaru melts into it, pressing Pavel to the wall as he sinks into the heat of his mouth again.

"I don't want to get you in trouble," Hikaru whispers into Pavel's mouth. He's got the beginnings of an erection and he doesn't know what to do with it. The last time he kissed anybody was fifteen, a girl he didn't even like. This is something else entirely. He feels like it's going to kill him, and like it's going to save his life, too.

"You won't get me in trouble," Pavel says. He grins. "Hikaru." He speaks like he's been holding his breath for a month, waiting to be able to say Hikaru's name like this, with the taste of Hikaru on his mouth, his fingers stroking lightly down Hikaru's face.

"We have to be careful," Hikaru says, looking back over his shoulder. "No one can know."

"I know how to be careful," Pavel says, nodding as he kisses Hikaru again. Hikaru moans into the kiss, too loud, and he's really talking to himself again, afraid that he's the one who won't remember to be careful, because he's already lost to the warm stroke of Pavel's tongue across the tip of his, he's already hard against Pavel's thigh and half out of his mind.

"We should -- compose ourselves," Hikaru says, and Pavel laughs, then they're both laughing, their foreheads pressed together. Hikaru can't believe the brightness of Pavel's eyes; he feels like it's sacrilege to look directly into them, but he can't stop. He strokes Pavel's face and sighs against his cheeks, kissing him absently.

"I've wanted to spend the night here with you," Pavel whispers. "But I was afraid -- I knew I would grab at you during the night without thinking."

"I want you to grab at me," Hikaru says, surprised by the roughness of his own voice. He watches Pavel's eyes get bigger, the irises swallowed up by his fattening pupils.

"We should compose ourselves," Pavel says, his voice shaking, and Hikaru nods, leaning down to kiss him again. Hikaru wants his mouth on every inch of Pavel by sunrise, and then, God, to hell with Kyoto, he wants to spend every minute of his off day in the futon with Pavel, inside him. He goes weak thinking about it, and Pavel swallows up his whimper.

"We should stop," Hikaru says, his hands sneaking up under Pavel's shirt again. "We'll be late."

"Yes," Pavel agrees, and then the word becomes a moan as Hikaru's hands travel over his bare skin. "Yes, Hikaru, yes."

They untangle from each other eventually, laughing in nervous spurts as they make their way to the dining room, Pavel still looking too well-kissed, but in a horrible sort of way Hikaru is proud of this and wants the others to see. When they arrive in the dining room the table is set, but it's too early even for the clear soup with mushrooms, and no one is seated. Pavel and Hikaru stand against the wall alongside Jim, and fortunately they're not the last to arrive. That title goes to McCoy, who shows up looking drunk. Pike gives him a lengthy appraisal and then turns to the others.

"I've got to go north tonight to take care of a situation," Pike says. "You all are on your own until I get back. Dr. Scott, I'm leaving the keys to the Jeep with you," he says, tossing them to Dr. Scott, who catches them, looking bewildered. "Continue with your assignments and report any issues to Lieutenant Commander Kirk here." He turns to look at Kirk, who doesn't look bewildered at all, his face as sure as stone in the presence of Pike.

"I trust you can handle being in charge until I return, Jim," Pike says, and Jim nods once.

"Yes, sir," he says. "Not a problem."

"Good." Pike sighs and surveys the group. He looks a bit wary. Pavel and Hikaru are quietly giddy, Spock and Uhura look suspicious, McCoy is glowering at the floor, and Dr. Scott looks as if he's struggling not to announce to the room that he doesn't actually know how to drive. Jim is dazed with pride, a tiny smile creeping onto his face. Pike sighs again.

"I should be back soon," he says.

When Pike is gone, Hikaru, Pavel and Jim walk to a restaurant at the bottom of the hill that is full of loud servicemen and a few Japanese girls who flit among them, smoking cigarettes and serving a function Hikaru doesn't want to think about. But they look happy, for the moment, and Hikaru is happy, too, unconcerned with any looks he might get from the others as he squeezes into a booth near the back with Jim and Pavel. They drink sake and eat okonomiyaki, two whole omelettes each, and Hikaru feels like he's been pulled from a dark, muddy river, that he's coming back to life slowly.

"So here's to you being in charge," Hikaru says, lifting a cup of sake in Jim's direction. "I'm wagering at least three of us will survive to see Pike's return."

"Watch how you're talking to your superior there, Lieutenant," Jim says. He smirks and clicks his cup of sake against Hikaru's. "Though I don't think anyone would be too upset if Dr. Spock disappeared on my watch."

"Why do you two dislike Dr. Spock so much?" Pavel asks. "He is not so bad to talk to if you give him a chance."

"I agree with McCoy," Jim says. "That psychology stuff is just a bunch of made up shit."

"Maybe you don't agree with all theories, I do not agree with most, but do you not think it is valuable to at least devote some scientific interest in the functioning of the human mind?" Pavel says.

"My grandpa once said that everything a man does can be traced back to trying to bed a woman," Jim says, and Hikaru laughs into his sake.

"Well, shut down the psychology departments of the world," he says. "Case closed. But, I don't know, I mean whether it's going to change the world or not, I think it's interesting, what Spock and Uhura are trying to do. People will want to know what the Japanese are going through, you know, outside of the obvious."

"Have you done any interviews that told you things outside of the obvious?" Jim asks, scoffing.

"Sure," Hikaru says. "Like the way the children have so quickly adapted. Not for the best, certainly, but they're surviving in a way that I can't imagine I would have been able to if I'd been through what they have. And the Japanese attitude toward the Americans is all over the place. It's pretty interesting, just talking to people. What kind of book he's going to make of all of this, I don't know."

"See, it is the field research that is most rewarding," Pavel says, grabbing Hikaru's arm. Hikaru grins at him in a moony sort of way that he hopes Jim won't catch, but if Jim thinks all men live to bed women he's probably not going to suspect anything based on only a smile. Still, Hikaru knows they have to be more than just careful. Even in a room full of men who would kick his face in for it, Jim maybe included, it's hard not to lean down and kiss Pavel behind his ear, just because he knows now that he can. It's a pretty hefty consolation that he's sure he'll be able to do much more than that once they're behind the closed door of Hikaru's room back at the inn, but even here, watching Pavel rant about the importance of scientific research, it's hard not to reach over and touch his leg under the table.

"This is exactly what I am doing here, too," Pavel says, slapping the table with both of his hands. Hikaru realizes he's actually a little drunk, and laughs under his breath. "I am here to see for myself, to be in the field. You must respect a man like Spock for trying to do this. He is not a fat old analyst sitting smoking in his chair. He wants to understand reality, like any scientist, not just to invent theory."

"Speaking of smoking," Jim says, pulling out his pack. Hikaru and Pavel both take a cigarette when offered, and Hikaru shudders happily at the thought of tasting the smoke on Pavel's tongue when they get back to the inn. When he was a kid he had a crush on the lifeguard at the community pool that he would pass on the way to the market to pick things up for his mother; it was a Whites Only pool, but he would see the lifeguard leaning on the outside of the chain link fence during his break, smoking cigarettes and looking as if he'd rather die than go back to his post. He was the first boy Hikaru knew how to want: miserable and slouching, flicking ashes.

"How about McCoy today?" Jim says to Hikaru, who scoffs. "He pretends to be such a hard ass, but that kid, it really got to him. You know he volunteered in the first war when he was just a kid? Dr. Scott got all of it out of him when he was drunk, and I got it out of Dr. Scott when he was drunk. McCoy was at Yale on some big scholarship, he came from money down South, top of his class -- I guess he still brags about all that. But he gave it up to join the service, and he hasn't left."

"Does he have a family?" Pavel asks.

"Ex-wife, apparently," Jim says, blowing smoke. "And a kid, I guess, too. He's a strange guy."

"He's not so strange," Hikaru says, feeling guilty about the things he said earlier, even if he was really ranting at himself.

"Yeah, maybe you're right," Jim says with a shrug. "I like him. Hell, maybe I'll end up like him! Career military man, never could make it right with a woman." Jim shrugs, tapping ashes onto his empty plate. "Now the war's over I gotta think about what the hell to do with the rest of my life."

"Many people feel that way," Pavel says. "It can be a bit overwhelming, but it is also exhilarating, yes?"

Jim smirks. "Ower-whelming," he says. "Yeah."

Hikaru crumples up a napkin and throws it at Jim, who laughs and bats it away.

"Don't get me started on your accent," Hikaru says.

"What!" Jim squawks, grinning. "I ain't got one, had I?" He winks at Pavel.

"This is strange," Pavel says, holding up a finger. "As I was telling Hikaru, this group on this mission, it is strange how much we all like each other, how much we all get along, considering that we are quite different."

"Hey, it's a brave new world," Jim says. He throws back the rest of his sake and sighs with satisfaction, shaking his head like a wet Golden Retriever. "I feel like those bombs wiped everything clean, you know? We're all starting from zero now."

"Bullshit," Hikaru says, laughing. "The Germans are starting from zero, and the Japanese. America's got a little more than nothing to work with."

"I don't mean economically or nothing," Jim says, blinking rapidly. "I mean in a mindset kinda way. Everything' s different now. Everybody's got to learn to deal with it, even the winners."

"That is a very intelligent summation," Pavel says, sitting back with a grin, clearly impressed. Hikaru scoffs and tries to drink more sake, but his cup is empty.

"It's also a pretty huge simplification," he says.

"It's funny," Pavel says, smiling at both of them. "My colleagues at Berkeley told me I would be surrounded by dimwit soldiers who would compromise my research. They underestimate you."

"They underestimate the Navy," Jim says, holding up a hand. "Other branches of the military, well, they got them pretty well figured."

It's raining hard when they leave the restaurant, and they jog down the street, slipping and laughing at each other's cursing. The rain is cold and almost too thick to see through, but Hikaru does spot a young Marine holding his coat over a Japanese girl's head as they walk together through the rain, both of them laughing, and he wants to believe, in the moment, that there's nothing nefarious behind it, that he's just being a gentleman and the girl is going to be whisked away to America when the Marine's tour is up, to become an American housewife and sleep beside that man with curlers in her hair. But it's not a happy story no matter how he tries to paint it in his head: the Marine's family will hate him for marrying a Japanese woman, the other wives in their neighborhood will shun her, she'll struggle with her English and fight with her husband, he'll wish he'd simplified his life by marrying a white girl.

"Hikaru!" Pavel shouts over the noise of the rain, shaking Hikaru's arm and breaking him from his thoughts, which always loop endlessly into every disenchanting outcome. Hikaru can't believe that anything bad will come of what he's found with Pavel, though even the purely rational parts of him know that something must.

"What's wrong?" Hikaru asks, stopping to stand beside Pavel while Jim runs through the rain ahead of them, whooping and throwing his arms up. If only Pike could see him now.

"Nothing is wrong," Pavel says. "This is the rain they were waiting for, I think, the first real rain since the bombs. We had to wait to come, you know, until the poison was washed out of the sky."

"And you're so sure that it has been now?" Hikaru says, but Pavel just grins. Suddenly Jim is running back to them, asking them if they're crazy and telling them to hurry up.

Back at the inn, they come in drenched and lose Jim at the bar when he heads over to join McCoy, who is humped over a drink. Hikaru and Pavel have had enough to drink to feel consequence-free before they've even shut themselves in the room, and once they do they peel each other's wet clothes off and sling them onto the floor, laughing while lightning flashes into the room from behind the window shades. Hikaru has done a lot of thinking about this, during dinner, on the way back, and before that, too, before he knew that any of it would actually be possible. He was going to light the lantern so he could see Pavel's skin as well as touch it, and before he touched him he was going to wrap him in the yukata Hikaru has been wearing to bed since he arrived, as a comforting kind of gesture.

He doesn't put the light on and he doesn't wrap Pavel in anything but his arms, his plans abandoned because Pavel is kissing him so wildly that he can't breathe, and he likes it, not being able to breathe; it's like Pavel is teaching him that he never really needed to. They stumble naked and damp onto the futon and laugh nervously into each other's mouths, hands everywhere, thunder shaking the walls and making the teacups on the table rattle against their saucers. Pavel's skin is cool at first but warms up quickly under Hikaru's hands, and soon they're sweating, Hikaru leaning up over Pavel as he kisses him, both of them moaning into each other's mouths when their erections drag together.

"How -- what have you done?" Hikaru asks, feeling childish. "'Cause I haven't really done anything. So I don't -- know -- what I'm doing, if that's not clear already."

"You do know," Pavel says, grinning up at him when lightning illuminates the room. "You must have known what you were doing to me, letting me lie in this bed. But I have done everything, I think, and nothing. Nothing like this."

Hikaru isn't sure that Pavel understood the question, because he wants to know what he's done in terms of sex. He feels so young under Hikaru's hands, despite the scars, but he's open to him, legs spread as he arches up against Hikaru so that their chests heave against each other. Hikaru is afraid he'll do something wrong, but it doesn't slow him down, it just thrums through him, the anxiety only heightening his arousal. His hand finds its way down between Pavel's legs, and his cheeks are searing hot as he strokes him, close to coming himself just from the noises Pavel makes, all breathless hahhs and ahhhs, not the needy little whimpers Hikaru imagined.

"Come on," Hikaru whispers, his lips moving over Pavel's. "I want you all over me."

Pavel hisses out a curse Hikaru doesn't recognize and then gives Hikaru what he wants, hot and sticky on his chest and running over his hand as Hikaru pumps it out of him. He sort of convulses when he comes, throwing his head back and squeezing Hikaru's arms, and Hikaru is grateful for the lightning that allows him to see this. The storm is getting worse outside, battering the building, and Hikaru will never hear rain fall again without getting hard. Pavel lies on his back, panting for a few breaths, Hikaru stroking his hair and kissing his temples, then he flips Hikaru and crawls down to take him in his mouth, and it's barely two slick slides of his tongue before Hikaru is spilling himself down Pavel's throat. He goes completely blank with pleasure; it erases him with sparks like little flames shooting down his spine. When he comes to Pavel is heavy against his chest, and the storm is still raging, providing useful cover, because Hikaru is pretty sure he screamed when he came.

They lie there for awhile in silence, their minds slowly catching up with their bodies. Hikaru spreads one hand across the small of Pavel's back, and Pavel sighs a lot, nuzzling his face against Hikaru's chest, getting comfortable. When he finally speaks it's in Russian.

"What?" Hikaru says, bleary with a confusion that he suspects might be sheer, untouched happiness. "What did you say?"

"It's embarrassing," Pavel says, his laugh a little puff of breath against Hikaru's fevered skin. "I said that -- I love your heartbeat. Maybe it makes more sense in Russian."

"Makes sense in English, too," Hikaru says. He loves the shape of Pavel's ear over his heart, and the soft press of his cheek, the surprising weight of his body. He can feel Pavel's heartbeat, too, still so fast, thumping against his chest.

"When did you know?" Hikaru asks. He's close to sleep but he can't get there before talking to Pavel, not anymore. He's going to have to keep Pavel somehow. It's not something he can afford to be cynical or even realistic about anymore. This is the thing he's been looking for, the thing that will matter when nothing else does.

"I knew on the plane," Pavel says, sliding off of Hikaru to lie at his side. "When I saw you sleeping with your arms folded, your head against the window. That was when I knew."

Hikaru laughs and wraps an arm around Pavel's shoulders, pulling him closer. "I mean about this generally," he says. "You know. That you were -- like this."

"Oh, with men? Mmm, when I was a teenager, my professors, I always admired them differently than the other students did. I wanted things from them, you know, a certain kind of attention. When did you know?"

"Probably when I was about thirteen. There was this lifeguard -- your professors didn't try to take advantage of you, did they?"

"No, Hikaru," Pavel says, and Hikaru can feel Pavel's smile on his skin. "They were married men, with children, and I think I infuriated them, anyway."

"You want to know when I knew about you?" Hikaru asks. He turns onto his side with a groan and Pavel closes both of Hikaru's hands in his, kissing them while they lie facing each other.

"In the bath?" Pavel says. "That first time? That was when I first had hope, the way you stayed so long with me, listening to me tell you horrible things."

"Well, it probably started then," Hikaru says. "But I knew, I knew for sure when you did this." He takes Pavel's hand and closes it around his thumb. Pavel laughs, squeezing Hikaru's thumb and kissing his face.

"I was afraid when I did that," he says. "I thought you would be scared away."

"Someday you'll explain to me why me sleeping on that plane impressed you so much," Hikaru says.

"Yes, someday."

"But you'll stay with me here, won't you? In my room? I hate it when you go, I feel like something will happen to you."

"I shouldn't stay," Pavel says, whispering. "We could be caught. They were killing people for this during the war, and I don't think it will be much better now that it's over."

"They were killing people for a lot of things. Fuck them. Fuck everybody but you and me. We'll keep each other safe."

Pavel doesn't argue with that. He smiles and wilts against Hikaru, who kisses the wet spikes of his hair, breathing him in. He's a miracle, and Hikaru can't believe the urge at the pit of him to tell everyone, not out of pride for having won him but because he feels like the world should know that someone like Pavel exists, that everyone would be comforted by it.

*

Hikaru wakes up to a little scratching sound, a mouse-like thing. He opens his eyes and sees Pavel lying on his stomach and propped up on his elbows, the blankets pulled down so that his bare back is exposed. He's writing in the notebook, his eyebrows pinched, concentrating so completely that he doesn't seem notice that Hikaru is awake. Hikaru runs two fingers down the smooth, pale length of Pavel's side, and he smiles, still writing.

"Did you have some kind of physics breakthrough in your sleep?" Hikaru asks. He leans up onto his elbow and sees that Pavel is writing in Russian.

"I'm writing you a letter," Pavel says. He leans over to kiss Hikaru on the mouth, a lazy little lick that makes the warmth in Hikaru's stomach concentrate into sparks.

"Not a goodbye letter, I hope," Hikaru says, flopping back onto the pillow. Pavel shakes his head.

"No, because, you see, I will have to properly teach you Russian before you can read this. It will take a long time."

"Okay. I've got a long time."

"So have I," Pavel says. He smiles as if he's finally beginning to believe this. Hikaru wonders how often Pavel wakes up wondering where he is now, and if he'll ever wake up to find Pavel still asleep beside him, peaceful.

Pavel turns back to his letter and writes a final sentence, nearly at the bottom of the page. He signs it, folds it up and hands it to Hikaru, who laughs.

"So this is my incentive to learn Russian?" he says, reopening the letter to stare at the words, not recognizing a single letter.

"I had to write it," Pavel says. "And my English is not good enough." He squeezes up to Hikaru's side and clutches at him as if he's ready to fall back to sleep. "We should go to the bath like we usually do," he says.

"Just give me a minute," Hikaru says, pushing his fingers through the short threads of Pavel's hair. The light through the windows is a cloudy yellow, the storm disappeared but the air still thick with saturation. Hikaru has a headache that almost feels good, a reminder that this isn't just a dream.

"Are you going to take me to Kyoto today?" Pavel asks.

"I'd rather stay here in this bed with you," Hikaru says, though the thought of wandering through the storm strewn streets of a mostly intact city with Pavel isn't bad, either.

"Yes, well," Pavel says, laughing. He heaves Hikaru up onto his elbows and scoots under him, smiling at him like he's the sunlight after the storm. Hikaru lets his weight drop down onto Pavel, and it makes his chest ache, his breath catching as they press completely together, nothing between them.

"Someday I'll be able to stay right here," Pavel says, stroking his hands down Hikaru's arms until he shivers. "But today I think it would be a little suspicious if we did not leave the room."

"Sus-spee-shus," Hikaru says, grinning. "That's another one for the list."

"What list?" Pavel asks, giving Hikaru's chin a scolding tap. "Fine, I will tease you horribly when you try to say things in Russian as revenge."

They go to the bath, which is empty, and the water feels especially clean, nearly overflowing after the rainfall. The sky is clear but hazy, and Hikaru smiles as he thinks about that first night in the bath. What if he had gone to bed without bothering to find it? What if Pavel had? But it doesn't matter now. Hikaru feels as if he's a key and the world is a lock that finally fits him. Nothing can touch him now that he's been pushed into the place he belongs.

The air gets clearer on the train ride out of Yamaguchi, and Pavel eats from a packet of Lay's potato chips that one of the Army CQs was handing out when he and Hikaru left. Hikaru is out of uniform, wearing the only street clothes he packed, but he still gets stared at, because he's with Pavel, who waves to Japanese children like he's happy to be seen as a slightly frightening cartoon character.

"They're wondering where I found you," Hikaru says, taking one of the chips. Pavel is eating them without pause, frowning a little as he chews and generally looking as if he's never had them before.

"Hmm, well what would you tell them if they asked?"

"That I found you in California and you followed me here."

Pavel grins, and Hikaru is twitching with the desire to lick the salt from his lips. He knows exactly how good it would taste, and that doesn't make it any easier to keep himself from confirming it.

"I think I will like living in California now," Pavel says. "I mean to say, I am looking forward to going back. Because you will be there, too."

"Yeah." Hikaru sniffs, fighting the urge to let a protective shell of cynicism close around him. "I'll fit right in with your genius colleagues."

"They are not all geniuses," Pavel says, and Hikaru laughs.

"I'm supposed to go home and help my father with his business," he says.

"That's a noble business, helping people deal with death," Pavel says. "What am I doing? Helping to deal out death, I guess."

"You'll still be working on weaponry when you get back?"

"I don't know," Pavel says, sighing down at the empty bag of chips. "I don't like to think about it, except that when I go back there, you will, too."

"Yeah," Hikaru says, elbowing him until he grins. "Me too."

"Oh, Hikaru!" Pavel says in a loud whisper, crushing the bag noisily into his lap. "There are so many things I'm not saying. I'm afraid I will sound young and stupid and in English I can hardly tell."

"Like what kind of things?" Hikaru asks. "I doubt you could sound stupid in any language."

"I could." Pavel smoothes the bag of chips out in his lap as if he feels guilty for taking his frustration out on it. "About you. I put it in the letter, maybe I should just leave it there."

"It's nothing bad, is it?" Hikaru asks. "You don't -- you aren't sorry, are you? About --?"

"No, no!" Pavel grabs Hikaru's arm for emphasis, which makes them both laugh. Hikaru feels as if he has an entire pop factory lodged in his chest, all fizzy and volatile, but sweet, too.

"I'm not sorry at all," Pavel whispers. "It's only that -- I have lost so many things. I don't know how to have anything without worrying that it will go."

"I'm not going anywhere," Hikaru says. He wishes he could hold Pavel's hand, but they're getting enough stares as it is. Pavel smiles down at the bag of chips, pretending to believe this. Hikaru knows it must be hard. He's already afraid to lose Pavel, imagining the million ways that he might.

Kyoto is quiet and uncluttered, nobody begging past the train station.They walk aimlessly through the streets, not sure what they're looking for. The city almost feels like a ghost town, the streets empty, though Hikaru gets the feeling that all of the residential areas are still heavily inhabited. One house along the main road has potted plants near the front door, kumquats and roses, and Pavel is fascinated by these, as well as a split pomegranate that has fallen from a tree that hangs over the wall of a temple's courtyard.

"I wish I had a camera," he says, poking at the pomegranate, and Hikaru laughs.

"You want to photograph spoiled fruit from foreign lands?"

"It's not spoiled. It's nice looking like this, very artistic, I think."

"I think you mean artful. I doubt that thing is much of an artist. Anyway, don't eat it."

The train ride was long and it's already late, so they enjoy the waning sun for as long as they can and then head into a restaurant where a small old woman serves them rice balls, clear soup and Kirin.

"Who is this white man?" she asks Hikaru as she's clearing his soup bowl. It's not asked unkindly.

"Can't you tell by my accent that I'm American?" Hikaru asks, and she laughs with a dry sort of cackle.

"Did they throw you out?" she asks.

"No, but plenty of them would like to. Anyway, this white man is my friend from America."

"Are you doctors?" she asks.

"He is," Hikaru says, though he's pretty sure Pavel hasn't earned his doctorate yet, since his education was interrupted by the war. "I'm only his translator."

"Is he a good doctor?"

"He's good, yes," Hikaru says. The woman nods and pats Hikaru's shoulder before walking away, her gait an almost hipless shuffle. Pavel smiles at Hikaru uncertainly, and Hikaru laughs.

"We were talking about you," he says.

"What did you tell her?" Pavel asks.

"That you're a rich, American opportunist and I'm your concubine," Hikaru says, and Pavel chokes out a laugh, his cheeks turning red.

"We should stay the night here," Pavel says. "We'll tell them we got too drunk to find the train station when we get back tomorrow."

"Are you sure?" Hikaru asks, his heart rate quickly accelerating. Pavel nods.

"Yes," he says, keeping his voice low, and Hikaru feels suddenly dizzy, as if Pavel has answered another unasked question. They pay for their meal and Hikaru asks the old woman to recommend an inn. She walks them outside to point to a three-story ryokan they can see from the street. The tiles on its roof are a chalky sort of blue, and their color against the purplish glow of the cloud-covered moon makes Hikaru's mouth go dry. He's not sure why, except that he's already thinking about what he'll be doing underneath them.

"Expensive, but you've got money," the old woman says. Hikaru thanks her again, feeling as if he's in a fairy tale, being led into the woods, promised things that are too good to be real. Pavel laughs when Hikaru misses the step off the curb and crashes against his side.

"Did you drink too much?" Pavel asks, steadying him.

"No," Hikaru says, and he's so glad for this. He wants to remember everything.

This proves to be more difficult than he expected, because his vision has tunneled with anticipation and he barely notices the inside of the inn. It's dark and highly polished and the man at the front desk studies Pavel so intently that for a moment Hikaru thinks he'll turn them away, a thought that panics him, as if this is the only place in the world where he and Pavel will have the opportunity to go to bed together tonight. Hikaru tells the man that they're doctors who have come from Tokyo, and this seems to break him from his contemplative trance. He gives Hikaru a key and directs him and Pavel to a room on the second floor. A girl is sent in to pour tea and roll out two futons. Hikaru struggles to memorize everything, all of it happening too fast: the way the girl keeps her eyes cast downward as if in frightened reverence of what is about to take place, the eerily peaceful sound of a small waterfall in the garden below their window, Pavel burning his tongue on the tea. Hikaru considers pulling the notebook from his bag and writing everything down, but things are awkward enough already. Pavel keeps smiling at him from across the room as if he's close to changing his mind.

"Is this room alright?" Hikaru asks, and then the question seems crass.

"You should lock the door," Pavel says, and Hikaru hurries to do so. When he turns back, Pavel is sitting on the floor, pulling off his socks. There's something so childish about the gesture that Hikaru is overcome with guilt for a moment. He starts to undress himself, and when he's down to his underwear he lights the lantern on the table, unwilling to miss this in the darkness. Unless of course Pavel would be more comfortable that way. Hikaru turns to ask him and finds Pavel suddenly standing beside him, smiling shyly. He touches Hikaru's arm with cautious fingers, and Hikaru can see, though he won't let himself really look, that he's completely naked.

"Should we put the beds together?" Pavel asks, and Hikaru nods, his mouth hanging open. He pushes both futons into the center of the room, and kneels on one, watching like a dumbstruck fool as Pavel climbs into the other. Pavel sighs when he has the blanket pulled up to his neck, and stares up at Hikaru with a forgiving sort of look.

"I'm sorry," Hikaru blurts, wishing now that he'd had more to drink. "I've never done this."

"Yes, you have, just yesterday," Pavel says, holding his arms out. Hikaru sighs and slides down into them, curling around Pavel and shutting his eyes against the hot thump of Pavel's pulse.

"I mean, that's all I've ever done," Hikaru says. Pavel pets his hair and Hikaru begins to feel like an idiot; he's already doing everything wrong. He should have pretended to be an expert. He should have ripped Pavel's clothes off as soon as they were through the door. He knows what film heroes are supposed to do when they want women, but he's got no idea what two men are meant to do with each other, aside from rumors of physical acts.

"I feel like we're in someone's dream," Pavel says. "This place is so untouched, compared to the other parts of the country, compared to anything I've seen."

"It is a dream," Hikaru says, sitting up on his elbow. He draws the backs of his fingers down Pavel's face, and Pavel smiles, eyelids fluttering. "How did you get this?" Hikaru asks, touching the little white scar on his left cheek.

"In Berlin," Pavel says. Hikaru doesn't need to hear any more. He nods and leans down to kiss Pavel just over his scar, very carefully, as if it's still sore.

"I never thought I would find something here that would make me feel hopeful," Hikaru says, his lips moving over Pavel's skin.

"Hmm, but maybe you did," Pavel says. "You thought you wanted this place to prove to you that there was nothing anywhere but disappointment, but maybe you really came here to be proven wrong about that. Or maybe I am speaking more for myself."

"I can't remember wanting anything but you," Hikaru says, and it's true, which is sort of stunning as he hears himself say it.

"I want you," Pavel says, nodding up at him. "Please."

"You have me."

"Hikaru." Pavel tugs at Hikaru's underwear, and Hikaru laughs, shimmying out of them awkwardly under the blanket, which he's grateful for, because otherwise his ass would be comically exposed to the refinement of the room, pointed up at the ceiling. He's leaning over Pavel on his knees and elbows, not sure what to do next.

"Get me some lamp oil," Pavel says helpfully. Hikaru retrieves it for him without really wondering why he wants it; he's just glad for the direction. He returns with the shallow dish of oil that was provided by the inn, and Pavel laughs when Hikaru kneels onto the futon with it, probably looking incredibly clueless.

"Set it down and come here," Pavel says. Hikaru obeys again, feeling ridiculous. Since he's the older one, and the taller, bigger one, he thought he would be the one calling the shots. He falls onto Pavel and kisses him hard, trying to feign confidence while his lips shake. Pavel laughs happily under his kisses, wraps his legs around the small of Hikaru's back and bucks up against him, grinding their erections together. Hikaru groans and Pavel gasps, his hips jerking again.

"This is not such a simple thing," Pavel says, taking Hikaru's face in his hands. Hikaru is breathless and flushed, having trouble keeping his eyes open with Pavel's dick searingly hot against his stomach.

"I know," Hikaru says, and Pavel laughs.

"I don't mean this," he says, his legs tightening around Hikaru's back. "This is the simple part. Everything else, Hikaru, you and I, it is much, much bigger, I think. I think it will change my whole life."

"Yes," Hikaru says, nodding, short of breath, out of his mind but sure of what he's saying. "Yes, me too, God, Pavel."

"But the simple part is this," Pavel says. He licks across Hikaru's bottom lip, then leans up onto his elbows to kiss him properly, his legs slipping down around Hikaru's sides. "When I saw you on that plane," he says, whispering into Hikaru's mouth. "And when I spoke to you in the bath, I wanted this so much, you -- your skin -- your arms pinning me down." He laughs and says something in Russian, bumping his nose against Hikaru's. "And that's a miracle, too, especially for people like you and me."

"People like you and me," Hikaru says, lulled into something like a trance. He could listen to Pavel tell him what he wants all night, pressed against him like this, waiting to give it to him.

"Well." Pavel licks Hikaru's lips apart and moans softly into his mouth, his head tipping back as he melts under Hikaru's kiss. When Hikaru pulls back Pavel's eyelids are so heavy, and his grin is a little wicked.

"That is the other, more complicated miracle," he says. "Feeling now like there is no one else in the world like us."

"There isn't," Hikaru says, his voice cracking as he captures Pavel's mouth again, kissing him hard to make up for the fact that he'll never be responsible for anything so eloquent, though he knows exactly what Pavel means. There is no one else like Pavel, no one even close, and there's nobody but Hikaru who could love him this much.

"The oil," Pavel says, breathing hard against Hikaru's lips. Hikaru has no idea what he's talking about for almost two full seconds, then he remembers the dish by the bed and gropes for it clumsily, getting it all over his fingers.

"Oh, shit," he mutters, scowling at his dripping hand.

"No, that is the whole point," Pavel says, laughing in an infectious way that gets Hikaru started, too, because he's completely lost. All he knows about what happens now is based on locker room humor and insults Navy men jokingly lob at each other out of boredom. When Pavel put his mouth on Hikaru's cock he could hardly believe that was a real thing that men actually did for each other and not just some punchline. He's still laughing nervously as Pavel takes his hand and guides it down between his legs. Hikaru wonders if this is some kind of weird fetish, wanting oil on your balls, and then Pavel moves Hikaru's hand lower.

"Wait," Hikaru says, because he knows there's only one place to fuck a man but somehow he thought that would all work itself out in the heat of the moment. Pavel keeps Hikaru's hand in place when he tries to pull away, the pads of Hikaru's trembling fingers pressed over wrinkled skin.

"Please," Pavel says, his face burning red to rival the heat on Hikaru's cheeks. "You want to, don't you?"

"Well -- yeah."

"Here," Pavel says, pushing at Hikaru's hand in a way that tells him nothing about what he's supposed to do. "Open me up," he says when Hikaru only stares at him, his chest heaving. They both swallow hard, and Pavel licks his lips. "Go on," he says when Hikaru strokes a finger over the hot pucker of his ass experimentally.

"Please," Pavel breathes out, flopping back as if Hikaru is exhausting him. "Pull me apart. I want to feel myself splitting in half around you."

"God!" Hikaru's stomach aches at the thought. "Won't it hurt?"

"No, no, here." Pavel dips his whole hand in the oil and brings it down between them. He closes his slippery fingers around Hikaru's cock and strokes him until he's moaning and dripping wet.

"See, this makes it slide," Pavel says.

"Unh, yeah, that, that makes sense, I mean -- I'm not, not actually as stupid as I seem, you know, ah, I actually got an -- ahhhh, an A in Physics."

"You mean top marks?" Pavel asks, beaming as if this is the best news he's heard all day. Hikaru nods drowsily, marveling at the absurdity of thinking about his high school physics classroom, with its peeling poster depicting the solar system over the blackboard, at a time like this.

"You're perfect," Pavel says, kissing Hikaru's hot cheeks. "I was not sure if you were serious, that you had never touched anyone, but now I know -- you were." He grins, and Hikaru tries not to feel insulted. "I like this, showing you -- here." Pavel sits up a little further and reaches around to slip an oil-slicked finger between Hikaru's legs, then up the crack of his ass, Hikaru too distracted by the hand still stroking his cock to anticipate the pad of one wet finger pushing into him.

"Jesus Christ!" he shouts, knocking his skull against Pavel's in a frantic attempt to hide his face against something, because he's ashamed of how incredibly fucking good that feels.

"See?" Pavel says gently, removing his finger to rub it soothingly around the rim. "It's good, yeah? So good. So do it for me, please, if you like."

"Huhh," Hikaru manages, practically drooling now. Pavel seems to accept this as consent, and he lies back, spreading his legs apart more widely. Hikaru is so overstimulated and overwhelmed that he's struggling to remember how to breathe, but he's also so hard that it hurts and he wants to make Pavel feel good more than anything. He finds the place where Pavel wants to be touched and tries not to think about it too much, which is easy to do when Pavel begins to moan softly, his eyes falling shut and his chin tipping up toward the ceiling as Hikaru's finger slides into him.

"It is a strange thing at first, I know," Pavel says in a breathy whisper, his eyes still closed, lashes fluttering. "But it feels -- s-so good, Hikaru."

"You are so fucking beautiful," Hikaru says, because he can't not say it, even though hearing it out loud gives him a full-body flush of embarrassment. Pavel barely seems to hear him, whimpering and writhing under Hikaru's touch, pushing himself needfully against Hikaru's finger when Hikaru continues to thrust in and pull out very slowly. Pavel curses in Russian and pushes Hikaru's hand away, making him think he did something wrong.

"Now I want you," Pavel says, nodding frantically. He takes Hikaru by the arms and pulls him closer, giving him a crushing kiss. Pavel's cock is hard and red against his stomach, and Hikaru strokes it with urgency, though he knows that's not what Pavel is asking for.

"Inside me," Pavel begs brokenly, wrenching his eyes open to stare up at Hikaru. "Now, please, I need it." He dissolves into Russian then, and it's a bit jarring, the way he seems as if he's going to burst into a thousand pieces if Hikaru doesn't hold him together with his cock, but it's also extremely arousing, and Hikaru pushes inside maybe faster than he should have, but Pavel doesn't complain, only squeezes Hikaru's arms hard, nails biting into skin, and that's the last thing Hikaru feels that isn't just the hot, tight pressure of Pavel's body. He hovers above Pavel, trying to regain his bearings, but then he realizes that he can feel Pavel's heartbeat against the head of his cock, he can feel Pavel's heart beating from inside him, and he nearly falls apart completely, actually sobs. It's sharp and quick but Pavel must hear it, and feel it, because he strokes Hikaru to reassure him, fingers through his hair and soft down the length of his back. Hikaru lets himself collapse onto Pavel for a moment, his forehead pressed against Pavel's breastbone.

"Oh, bozhe, that's it, that's right, that's it," Pavel says, babbling, and then it's back to Russian. Hikaru thrusts into him in slow drags, Pavel writhing on him like he wants much more than what Hikaru can manage to give him without coming. When Pavel squeezes his muscles tight around Hikaru's cock he comes with a stupid yelp of surprise, feeling like a failure of a first timer, but also so incredibly good, pumping himself into Pavel instead of into his own hand, and sinking into the comfort of Pavel's arms rather than waking from his fantasy to remember himself. He starts to pull out and Pavel won't let him. He brings Hikaru's hand down to his cock, which is still hard against his stomach. Hikaru gives him a sloppy grin and an even sloppier hand job, but Pavel comes after just a few slow strokes, kissing Hikaru, both of them with their eyes closed, making wordless noises in a language that Pavel will certainly teach Hikaru much more easily than Russian.

"We'll do it again," Pavel says when they're lying on their sides, twisted together. He kisses Hikaru's forehead, and then just rubs his face against it like a sleepy child. Hikaru spreads his hands across Pavel's back, which is damp with sweat and marked with scars that he traces with his fingers, another new alphabet.

"I want to kill everyone who ever hurt you," Hikaru says, drunk with wonder and edging back into tremendous fear, pushed there by the force of his love for Pavel, who only snorts and holds Hikaru closer.

"I suppose you've grown used to carrying a gun, then?"

"Oh, I wanted to kill them before I had the gun. Probably before I met you."

"We shouldn't be talking about this after your first time having sex. It's bad luck, I think. But they will all be hanged if they haven't been already."

"What did you talk about after your first time?" Hikaru asks, beginning to regain his breath and his insecurities. He wonders if Pavel's first was a brawny Russian -- or worse, a fellow genius -- who handled him like an archer fitting a bow into a quiver before shooting him into the stars. Pavel makes a disapproving noise and sits up on an elbow to stare down at Hikaru. He pokes at Hikaru's bottom lip, pulling down on it and then letting it snap back into place.

"I've never made love with anyone who wanted to talk to me," he says. Hikaru pulls him back down and holds him against his chest, feeling the tension drain from Pavel's shoulders as he settles against him, growing comfortable.

"We shouldn't sleep," Pavel says, speaking through a yawn. "We should make use of our time -- we'll have to get a train and go back early."

"Oh, God. I'd forgotten all of that."

"What, our mission?"

"Yes. God, I love it when you say mission."

"Why?"

"I don't know." Hikaru kisses the top of Pavel's head. "I love listening to you talk."

He tickles his fingers up and down Pavel's neck idly, and when he feels something wet against his chest he smiles, thinking Pavel has fallen asleep and is drooling, but the quality of the moisture is different, thinner and hotter, and when he realizes Pavel is crying he's not sure he should say anything. He doesn't want to embarrass him.

"You alright?" he says when Pavel sniffles very softly.

"Da," Pavel says. "Yes." He gives Hikaru a trembling little kiss just under his right nipple, and doesn't seem want to discuss the matter further. Hikaru pulls Pavel fully into his arms, letting him hide his face, Hikaru's chin resting on top of Pavel's head. Pavel's hair smells like cornflower and the mineral water from the bath at the ryokan. Hikaru wishes he had been the one who saved him. He wants a time machine. He wants to erase everything that ever happened to both them, everything except this.

*

They leave Kyoto in a daze as the sun is rising, Pavel dozing against Hikaru's shoulder in the empty train compartment. They didn't do much sleeping the night before, and Hikaru is sore, so he imagines that Pavel must be doubly so, though he seems content and comfortable against Hikaru's side. Whenever someone shuffles down the aisle outside the compartment Hikaru has to jostle him awake so they won't be caught, and he feels so guilty for doing it, though the look of sleepy confusion on Pavel's face is better every time.

"When we get back to the city I just want to watch you sleep," Hikaru whispers. They won't have to report for duty until tomorrow morning, and the train ride will eat up most of their day, but as long as Hikaru can retire to a bed with Pavel again when they get where they're going, he can't complain. He spent the whole night learning how to be inside Pavel without losing his mind and ending it all within thirty seconds. He can't stop thinking of having Pavel in his lap, spilled back against his chest and so tight around his cock, close to complete exhaustion, moaning only quietly, his eyes shut against Hikaru's jaw, forehead damp with sweat. Hikaru could have stayed like that forever, just breathing.

Pavel hums with half-asleep interest at the news of Hikaru's plan to watch him sleep, and returns his head to Hikaru's shoulder, nuzzling his neck while Hikaru keeps an eye on the aisle. Pavel is asleep again in ten seconds, his lips falling apart, and Hikaru's eyes are beginning to droop, too. He can't allow himself to fall asleep, so he busies himself with thoughts of the mission, which will be over in a month. He tries to imagine what will happen when they return to America. Hikaru is still living with his family, and Pavel's living space is likely a tiny room on Berkeley's campus. Will they rent an apartment and call each other roommates? Will Pavel grow bored with him before they even leave Japan, or will it happen when they return and he remembers what it's like to converse with actual intellectuals? What the hell will Hikaru tell his parents?

He keeps himself awake with his worries until they reach Yamaguchi, where they take a very crowded local train back to the inn. Pavel is like a zombie, pushed against Hikaru out of necessity in the crowd, and Hikaru holds his elbow discreetly, bracing him when he starts to sway. After fighting their way out of the train car at their station, they trudge up the hill to the inn, Pavel stumbling and Hikaru beginning to have trouble keeping his eyes open, too. Once they finally reach Hikaru's room they both collapse onto the futon without bothering to remove anything but their shoes. The sun is starting to get low, and Hikaru hates that tomorrow they'll have to return to their work. His happiness is edged with the reality of this place and what it represents. Everything ends.

"Hey," he mumbles into his pillow, and Pavel wrenches his eyes open to blink at him. They're both on their stomachs, cheeks on the pillow, hands clasped together on the mattress between them.

"Promise me you'll never go," he says, in Japanese, because he doesn't want to scare Pavel away with his own growing fear.

"What?" Pavel says, and the pathetic smallness of his voice makes Hikaru laugh and kiss his face in apology.

"You said you know five languages," Hikaru says. "What are they?"

"Only Russian and English, really," Pavel says. "Some French, my mother taught me, and Latin, but that doesn't really count. And German."

Hikaru nods. He thought that might be one of them.

"You were there for -- two years?" Hikaru has tried to piece the story together. He's a little obsessed with it, though still afraid to know.

"Yes," Pavel says. "But it seemed much longer -- and then, when I was in Majdanek, it felt like I had only been in Berlin for a few days. It was Russia that seemed closer then, I don't know why. On my second day there, this man -- for a few seconds I was sure he was my father." He closes his eyes, smiling darkly, laughing at himself. "I'm talking in my sleep," he says.

"Sorry," Hikaru says. "I'm sorry -- you should rest."

Pavel moans in agreement and rolls onto his side, settling into Hikaru's arms. Hikaru shuts his eyes, giving up on staying awake. It's all going by too quickly now; a moment ago they were in Kyoto. He wonders if they'll ever go back. Probably not. It's starting to worry him that, no matter how much fretting over it he does, he can't really envision a future for himself after this mission ends. Anything involving Pavel seems like a far-fetched fantasy, but the idea of not having him is impossible, too.

They sleep through the whole night, stomachs growling, and Hikaru knows they're wasting precious down time, but it feels too good to curl around Pavel and undress in spurts, pulling off their shirts, then waking an hour later to squirm out of their trousers. When they're finally naked under the blankets, Hikaru tucks himself around Pavel completely, pushing his knees in behind Pavel's and his stomach against the small of Pavel's back, arms around his shoulders. Pavel sighs, and Hikaru revels in the still of the room, and the feeling of completeness that hums across his skin as he holds Pavel against him. Whatever the future brings, he'll be a different person because of this. Not better or worse, just different, having known this kind of perfect quiet, nothing but the sound of Pavel's breath. He'll always be nostalgic for this night, not the one before, though certainly he'll remember losing his virginity fondly. This is the thing he'll miss the most someday, the night they wasted with sleep. He's not sure why, but he knows it's true, that everything in his past will now only grow around this moment.


	5. Chapter 5

Time begins to pass strangely once Pavel begins sleeping in Hikaru's bed: the nights are like an eye blink, and the work days stretch on endlessly, a purgatory he never really leaves. Spock tries to interview a street gang outside of the train station and they decide they'd rather rob him. Hikaru manages to scare them away with the gun, but he's not sure he would have been able to do much more if they had called his bluff, so he asks Jim to teach him how to shoot. This eats into his free time, but Pavel usually joins them, leaning against the garden wall while Jim sets up targets for Hikaru to hit. Hikaru is so absorbed in his lessons that it takes him awhile to notice that Pavel jumps every time the gun goes off.   
  
"You don't have to stay and watch," he says as they're walking up to his room one night to clean up before dinner.   
  
"I like it," Pavel says.   
  
"You do? It seemed like maybe -- the noise was bothering you."   
  
Pavel shrugs. "It is involuntary. I like watching you shoot cans. You're getting better already."   
  
Hikaru searches Pavel's body for a gunshot wound that night, and finds only cruder scars. He wonders how the Germans killed his professors. Pavel pretends not to notice Hikaru's inventory of his skin, and clings hard when Hikaru is inside him, petting his hair as if to tell him that everything is okay now.   
  
At Pavel's urging, Hikaru writes to his family. He mentions Pavel, knowing that only his mother will understand the significance. There hasn't been a word about it between them, but Hikaru has never doubted that she knows what he is. She still talks to him about the children he'll someday have, but there's a kind of sharpness in it, as if he'll have them despite his failings.   
  
Pavel asks Hikaru to read the Japanese newspapers to him, but it proves to be a bad idea, because Pavel's nightmares restart shortly after he begins hearing about the details of the black market gouging and state-sponsored prostitutes recruited to serve as a buffer between the innocent girls of Japan and the GIs. Pavel wakes up saying things that Hikaru can't understand, and he assumes it's all Russian until he recognizes _nein_ one night as Pavel fights Hikaru's attempts to calm him down.   
  
" _Bitte, bitte_!" he shouts, pulling away from Hikaru. He's sobbing and choking on his breath, eyes unseeing until he finally seems to recognize Hikaru. He goes still then, arms dropping into his lap.   
  
"It's okay," Hikaru says, stroking Pavel's wet cheeks with his thumbs, holding him still. "You're safe, I'm here."   
  
"Pieter," Pavel says, and then he sobs again, only once, shaking his head. "They killed you."   
  
Hikaru doesn't say anything, just pulls Pavel against his chest and holds him there until he's asleep again, dropping into it with sudden bonelessness like he's been turned off. When Hikaru finally falls asleep himself he dreams that he's running through a dark tunnel, looking for a door at the end and finding nothing, just more and more of what he's already seen.   
  
He wakes in the bluish light of early morning and knows that Pavel is awake, too, though he's just lying on his side, turned away from Hikaru. His shoulders are tense, and he flinches when Hikaru runs his fingers down his bare back, until the reaches the borders of the four long scars that criss-cross like claw marks. Hikaru scoots forward to cover them with his body, pulling Pavel against him.   
  
"Is it time to get up yet?" Hikaru asks. Pavel fumbles for Hikaru's watch, which lives beside the futon during the night, always on Pavel's side, because he likes the ticking.   
  
"Not yet," Pavel says. His voice is thick, as if he's been crying, and Hikaru remembers that he has, in his sleep.   
  
"You called me Pieter last night," Hikaru says. He kisses the back of Pavel's neck, trying to seem as if this didn't bother him deeply. "In your sleep."   
  
"Oh."   
  
"Was that -- one of your professors, didn't you say?"   
  
Pavel is still and silent, and Hikaru wonders if he's tired of being questioned. But it was Pavel who volunteered all of that information so easily, and so early on.   
  
"You going back to sleep?" Hikaru asks.   
  
"No."   
  
"You also said -- and you've done this before, a bunch of times -- _bit-tah_ \-- is that someone's name?" Hikaru is aware that he might be pushing the limits here, but he's hurt. Pavel said that he had crushes on his professors, and this Pieter was one of his professors, and Pavel is still looking for him in his sleep. Maybe he's even looking for him in Hikaru. He certainly seems to know exactly what he wants in bed, as if he's reenacting something.   
  
" _Bitte_ ," Pavel says. "Please."   
  
"Oh, in Russian?"   
  
"German." Pavel rolls onto his back. He reaches up to touch Hikaru's jaw, drawing two fingers down toward his chin. "Did I really call you Pieter?"   
  
"Yes. You looked right at me and -- but you were asleep."   
  
"What else did I say?" Pavel asks, looking worried.   
  
"You said, 'They killed you.' That's all."   
  
Pavel frowns. "I said that in English?"   
  
"Well, I'd been speaking to you in English, trying to calm you down. Maybe you were a little bit awake. I don't know. It was strange."   
  
Pavel stares up at Hikaru, frowning, and Hikaru feels as if he's looking into the face of a Pavel he's never met before. He doesn't like it at all, though he's known that this has been coming, that the carefree mask would fall away. He's partly relieved, but afraid to find out that what he has with Pavel is only part of something cheap and insincere that Pavel has been clinging to in order to keep himself sane.   
  
"I loved him," Pavel says softly. "Dr. Pieter Belkovsky. My mentor. He kept me alive after they killed Dr. Nadel. I was seventeen, I didn't -- Pieter was an atheist, too, but that night we both pretended to be believers. We talked about God like we knew Him. It's a funny time to believe in God, after seeing what we saw, but we didn't, really. We just." The placid look on Pavel's face crumbles into a wince and he covers his eyes, his lips shaking.   
  
"Hikaru, don't make me tell you," he begs, and Hikaru scoops him up into his arms, whispering a thousand apologies, rocking him like a child.   
  
"You don't have to tell me anything," he says, kissing Pavel's ear to seal the promise, though of course now he wants to know more than ever. _I loved him, my mentor_. Hikaru hates that he can still be jealous despite the gravity of all of this. The man is dead, for God's sake. And he definitely didn't go peacefully, and Pavel almost certainly bore witness. That's all that matters here, not Hikaru's new knowledge that he isn't what Pavel has always been looking for, only a convenient stand-in, an appropriate partner for the ruined version.   
  
Pavel holds onto Hikaru and sniffles against his shoulder, burrowing close. He's shaking in a deep, animal sort of way, really shuddering.   
  
"I don't want to go out there today," he says. "Something bad will happen, I can feel it."   
  
"Nothing will happen," Hikaru says, even as a shudder moves through him, as if Pavel's condition is contagious. He hates talk of omens even more than that of ghosts and curses and bad luck.   
  
"I'll be with you," Hikaru says. "I can go all the way to the fields with you if you want me to."   
  
They call what used to be Hiroshima 'the fields.' The medical station, already beginning to deteriorate as patients are moved to actual hospitals, is called 'the tents.'   
  
"No, no, I don't know, never mind." Pavel sits back, wiping at his face. "Can we go to the bath?" he asks, and Hikaru nods, bending forward to kiss his forehead.   
  
"I'm so sorry," he says again. "I didn't mean to -- I shouldn't be --"   
  
"It's okay," Pavel says, smiling a little. He's still trembling, but now it's more of a shiver. The room is cold; winter creeps closer every day.   
  
"I'm sorry I called you by the name of a ghost," Pavel says. "And you shouldn't be sorry for wondering who he was. He used to call me Pasha -- not at university, of course, but when we were prisoners together. Little Pasha. I remember he asked me if I knew that my name means 'small.' Of course I knew, everyone had always teased me with this. But the way he said it was different, as if it made me worthy of protecting. I think he loved me like a son, by the end. He was much older than me, almost fifty."   
  
"Did he know -- how you felt about him?" Hikaru asks, the blood pounding in his veins as his jealousy peaks again.   
  
"No, no," Pavel says, shaking his head. "He thought of me as completely innocent, I believe. He was married, and had children. I don't know if they survived. I thought of looking for them when I went back to Leningrad, but once I got there all I could think about was leaving. I didn't want to be the one to tell them what happened to Pieter. As I said, I was such a coward after the war. I'd spent two and a half years dreaming of running away, and that was exactly what I did, as soon as I could."   
  
"I'm glad you did," Hikaru says. He puts his hand over Pavel's, stroking his thumb across the tiny hairs there and obscenely wishing that he had been the one trapped in Berlin with him, keeping him alive when there was real danger everywhere. "What does that mean -- 'Pasha?' Is it some kind of nickname?"   
  
"Some kind, yes, it doesn't mean anything, just a nickname for people called Pavel. My parents called me Pasha. I think Pieter must have guessed that. He was always trying to make me feel safe, treating me like a child. So different from when he was my professor, he was very demanding then."   
  
"Are you sure he didn't fall in love with you, too?" Hikaru asks, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.   
  
"I don't think so," Pavel says. His eyes are far away, pointed blindly at something invisible just over Hikaru's shoulder. "He missed his wife very much. He would ask for her in his sleep."   
  
Hikaru helps Pavel up from the futon, unable to continue this conversation. Does this mean that Pavel misses Dr. Pieter very much? Well, of course he does, and Hikaru could never fault him that. He just wishes it didn't make him feel like shit to know for sure.   
  
At breakfast, Hikaru asks Jim if he can accompany Pavel and Dr. Scott to the fields, since they've been working without a military escort while Pike is away. This results in an arrangement that sends Jim to escort Pavel and Dr. Scott while Hikaru stays with Dr. McCoy at the tents, and Uhura and Spock are ordered to stay at the inn and spend the day organizing their notes. Hikaru expects Spock to protest, but he accepts Jim's instructions with a nod.   
  
The day progresses normally for Hikaru: death, disease, and frustrated dialogue with McCoy. When the Jeep returns for them at the end of the work day he looks for Pavel anxiously, remembering what he said earlier. He's in the front seat, turning to laugh at something Jim said. Jim is leaning between the two front seats and smacking Pavel's shoulder to emphasize something, and Hikaru is filled with an overflowing gratitude that he didn't expect, because Jim has kept Pavel safe. But safe from what? There is nothing in those fields but legions of ghosts. Hikaru shudders at the thought, because of course ghosts have the most powerful evil eye, their envy a kind of gloom that haunts the living. When he climbs into the backseat Pavel scrambles back to sit beside him, giving McCoy the front, and Hikaru almost forgets himself and kisses Pavel's cheek. For a wild half-second he feels like he could, that no one here would mind.   
  
"How are you?" Pavel asks, slapping Hikaru's knee.   
  
"Okay," Hikaru says. "You?"   
  
"I am good. There is a party for GIs tonight in town. Do you want to go?"   
  
"Asking me to take you as my date?" Hikaru says with a snort. He glances at Jim. "Or has he asked already?"   
  
"It'll be a good time," Jim says. "There's a live band and everything."   
  
"I don't dance," Hikaru says.   
  
"Well, do you drink? 'Cause there will be plenty of that going on, too," Jim says, elbowing him.   
  
"I can drink at the inn," Hikaru says, feeling guilty, because maybe Pavel wanted to go, but he would hate it, Hikaru is sure, unless he maybe likes to dance. Hikaru thinks of slow dancing with Pavel in the room instead, and leans very subtly against Pavel's shoulder, glad that the day is over and they can spend the rest of it together.   
  
"What do you guys do at night, anyway?" Jim asks, slicing through Hikaru's complacent mood. "I never see you up at the ping-pong table or down at the bar."   
  
"Hikaru is teaching me Japanese," Pavel says, quick and a little too enthusiastically, but it's a good save. "And I'm teaching him Russian in exchange."   
  
"Wow, fun," Jim says, raising his eyebrows. "You guys should expand your horizons."   
  
"What, by going out and fucking prostitutes?" Hikaru says, sharply enough to quiet McCoy and Dr. Scott's conversation up front.   
  
"Jesus!" Jim says. "That's not what I fucking meant, okay? I'm talking about ping-pong, Hikaru."   
  
"Settle down back there, boys," McCoy says, laughing. "Don't make Scotty pull the car over."   
  
"I don't know why you have to get so damn defensive," Jim mutters. "I'm going to the goddamn party. Pavel, how about you?"   
  
Hikaru and Jim both turn to look at Pavel, who stares back at them with his mouth hanging open, struggling for an answer. Hikaru isn't sure which one he hopes Pavel will give. He wants Pavel with him, of course, but maybe they've been too reckless. Jim at least is growing suspicious.   
  
"I think I would like to try this sushi," Pavel says. "Maybe you will come with us, Jim, before you go to the party?"   
  
"No thanks," Jim says, mumbling and looking out his window, as if Pavel has crushed his ego. "I hate that raw fish stuff."   
  
Hikaru is in a terrible mood by the time they get back to the inn, and he asks Mai to bring up a bottle of sake when she comes with the hot water and clean tea cups. Pavel washes his face with the water and then Hikaru lets him wash his, too, his anxious fury about Jim's comments and angst over the ghost of Pavel's professor threatening to subside when Pavel looks up at him sweetly, cleaning the soot from his cheeks. When Mai returns they jump apart, and Hikaru starts to feel again like he has for so long, like there is never going to be anyplace he can go where he won't feel like he has more to hide than anyone else in the room.   
  
"You two are such good friends," Mai says as she pours sake for them, looking from Pavel to Hikaru. "I never see you apart."   
  
"Just stay out of it," Hikaru snaps, and she looks up at him with alarm, then quickly down at her feet, apologizing.   
  
"Wait," Hikaru says when she hurries toward the door. He catches her arm, and she flinches, looking back at him fearfully. "I'm sorry," Hikaru says. "I thought -- you were teasing me."   
  
Mai seems to be at loss, as if she doesn't understand how remarking on his friendship with Pavel could be misconstrued as anything malicious. Hikaru makes her stay and have a drink with them to make up for it, and Pavel seems a bit lost but smiles when Mai agrees to sit with them.   
  
"I should be working," she says, sipping from her cup. "There's always so much to do. We're lucky to have customers," she adds quickly, smiling.   
  
"Do the men give you a hard time?" Hikaru asks. Mai blushes and looks down at her lap, which tells him that yes, they do.   
  
"Some of them are so -- noisy," she says. "But no one from your group. _Jimu-san_ is a very nice man. He helped me, one night, when some others were -- troubling me."   
  
"Jim?" Hikaru says, laughing. "I thought he might be one of the ones who bothered you."   
  
"Oh no! He is very much a gentleman. He's been teaching me how to play that ping-pong game."   
  
"That's only because he likes you," Hikaru says. "If you know what I mean."   
  
Mai's blush deepens, but she smiles. "I don't mind if that's his reason," she says. "Are you my big brother now, Hikaru- _san_?"   
  
"I have three sisters at home," Hikaru says, as if this excuses him from being nosy.   
  
"Do you chase men away from them?"   
  
"I don't need to. They're not as pretty as you."   
  
He's not sure what he's doing: flirting with Mai just to thwart Jim's efforts? To prove something? He glances at Pavel, who smiles like a good sport, wrapping his hands around his sake cup.   
  
"I'm teaching him Japanese," Hikaru says.   
  
"Is he a good student?" Mai asks, laughing.   
  
"Yes, very good, he's a genius, you know."   
  
"He seems so young," Mai says, and they both gaze at Pavel, who wilts a little, looking confused. "He's my favorite, really. He folds the towels after he uses them! And he's never wearing shoes, it's so sweet."   
  
"He's my favorite, too," Hikaru says. Mai smiles at him with what might be understanding, and Hikaru pretends that she's his sister and that he's just told her everything, that she'll allow Pavel into the family with arms outstretched.   
  
"Sorry to leave you out of the conversation," Hikaru says to Pavel in English. Pavel shrugs and drinks from his cup.   
  
"It's okay," he says. "I like listening to you talk." He smiles in a way that makes Hikaru feel like he's been punched in the gut, only it's nice and warm and prickly, and he's ready to hold Pavel in his lap now, and taste the sake on his lips. He makes an excuse to Mai about a dinner he must attend in the city, and helps her to her feet.   
  
"You haven't had too much to drink, have you?" he teases, and she turns as she's headed for the door, giving him a sly smile.   
  
"I forgot, you're American," she says. "You don't know that Japanese girls only pretend not to drink. I'm not such a lightweight. Have fun at your dinner."   
  
Hikaru and Pavel walk down the hill and take the train into the city. It's beginning to get darker earlier in the evening, and the sky is pitch black by the time they reach the red light district. There's a misty fog hanging in the air, making everything seem slightly sticky, and Hikaru is glad when they find the sushi restaurant Uhura recommended without much difficulty. It is packed full of city officials, as she promised, yesterday's leaders, talking somberly as they refill each other's sake cups. Hikaru sits at the bar with Pavel and watches as he reacts with delight to each piece of sushi placed before him. Sometimes when he asks what he's eating he doesn't recognize the English word and Hikaru has to make hand gestures or do imitations of fish in order to explain. By the time they leave they're both sore from laughing, their sides aching and their cheeks stretched into smiles they can't get rid of.   
  
"You'll do that little eel dance for me back in the room, too, yes?" Pavel says, beaming up at Hikaru, who is almost drunk enough to clutch Pavel to his side. He gets halfway there, then pats Pavel's chest and steps away. It breaks Hikaru's heart in the best way, how they'll always have to keep each other secret. It makes everything harder, until they're alone, and then it heightens every sensation, the thought that they could be caught, that no one can ever know.   
  
"I do want to dance," Hikaru says, nodding in slow, drunken tips of his head. "Me and you, back in the room, we're gonna dance."   
  
"But we won't have any music," Pavel says, grinning and squeezing Hikaru's elbow, and that's when the two men step in front of them.   
  
They're tall and very pale, both wearing brown leather jackets, their hands stuffed into the pockets. Hikaru thinks he recognizes something about them, and knows without a doubt that it's not anything good. He and Pavel try to walk around them, but one of them grabs Pavel's shoulder, grinning as if he's an old friend.   
  
"Comrade," he says. "I heard your accent -- you're Russian?" The man's accent is like Pavel's, his voice rough in a fake-friendly way that makes Hikaru glad to have his gun in the pocket of his jacket.   
  
" _Da_ ," Pavel says, pulling away. The color in his cheeks drains away, and Hikaru glances around the street, which is busy, crowded with GIs and their girls, and black market stall workers blowing their profits on booze. He tells himself not to worry, but the look on Pavel's face is frightening him. The taller man says something to Pavel in Russian, and Pavel mutters a response, walking away. Hikaru follows him, expecting the men to pursue them down the street, but they're standing in place when Hikaru turns back to glare at them, lighting cigarettes and watching him and Pavel disappear into the crowd.   
  
"What did he say?" Hikaru asks Pavel, who is staring straight ahead, looking dazed. Pavel doesn't respond for a moment, then looks up at Hikaru as if he'd forgotten he was there.   
  
"He -- oh." Pavel shakes his head. "He said he's come here to sell Russian cigarettes to black market vendors. He said bad things about Japanese people, ignorant things. Let's get back, okay?"   
  
Hikaru turns back again, but he can't see the two men anymore. He watches Pavel as they head for the train station, and he still seems out of it, his eyes unfocused.   
  
"You didn't know that guy, did you?" Hikaru asks. The air is still heavy, thick with moisture, and Hikaru can't wait to get out of it, back to the safety of his dry room at the inn. They could have been there all night, practicing their alphabets in the notebook, if Jim hadn't harassed them about never leaving the room.   
  
"I didn't know him," Pavel says, frowning. He's still staring straight ahead, as if Hikaru is too separate from whatever just happened to behold. "Either of them -- no. Come on, let's hurry."   
  
"Are you alright?" Hikaru asks.   
  
"Yes, just so tired." Pavel finally turns to look at him, and smiles. "Ready to be in bed with you."   
  
"Me too," Hikaru says, brushing his hand against Pavel's just slightly. "God, to hell with Jim trying to get us out of our room. It's too much wasted time -- it's so hard to talk to you now without wanting all your clothes off."   
  
Pavel smirks and swoons toward Hikaru for half a second, a little bird again.   
  
"Don't say to hell with Jim," he says. "He's lonely, Hikaru, that's why he's asking why we don't come play ping-pong with him."   
  
"Well, he's got Mai, hasn't he? What does he need us for?"   
  
They get back to the inn and bypass the festivities at the bar, where Dr. Scott and Dr. McCoy are occupying their usual positions, ranting at each other from opposite bar stools. Uhura is there with Spock, who doesn't seem to be drinking, though Uhura might have had a few, because she offers Hikaru and Pavel a flirtatious wave as they head up the stairs. Hikaru wonders where Jim is, and if he's really lonely. He feels a little prideful at the thought that Jim might be, because he wants to believe, more than anything, that now that he's found Pavel he'll never know loneliness again.   
  
Back in Hikaru's room, they pull each other free of their clothes and fall to the futon without any of the awkwardness they sometimes suffer. They're both still learning each other, but on this night there's none of the usual anxious stops and starts, no stuttering or laughter. Pavel is so soft beneath Hikaru's weight, and so open to him, ready to give himself completely, his whole body arching with an eagerness that makes Hikaru moan. Pavel smiles up at him blearily, holding his finger over his lips to remind him to be quiet.   
  
"God, you --" Hikaru says in a rush of hot breath against Pavel's cheek, and that's as far as he gets.   
  
"Shhh," Pavel whispers, and for some reason it's the most arousing thing Hikaru has ever known, being told to shut up. He thrusts into Pavel with a mindless rhythm, listening to nothing but his body and Pavel's, suddenly fluent in their languages. For a moment neither of them really exists, as if they're more ideas than flesh, until Hikaru's orgasm breaks through the illusion, returning him to himself, Pavel gasping beneath him. He doesn't even realize that Pavel has finished, too, until he leans down to hold him and feels the wet, sticky mess of it on his chest. Finally he does laugh, overcome by that pop-factory feeling in his chest coupled with the afterburn of his orgasm, and Pavel just rolls his head back and forth on the pillow, beaming and hiccupping with pleasure, blissed out of his mind.   
  
"Hikaru," Pavel says, petting him in little strokes down the back of his neck. "Where did you come from? Are you even real?"   
  
"I always want to ask you the same thing," Hikaru says. He grins, embarrassed to admit it. "I can't -- I can't believe that I could keep you."   
  
"You had better keep me," Pavel says with irritable sincerity that causes them both to burst into laughter. Hikaru rolls onto his back with a groan, waiting to remember reality as soon as he's left the heat of Pavel's body, but tonight it doesn't come. He still feels like he's enclosed in something eternal and untouchable as he watches Pavel dig into the pocket of Hikaru's discarded pants for his pack of cigarettes.   
  
"Last one," he says, pouting as he taps it from the pack.   
  
"You can have it," Hikaru says, but after Pavel lights it he hands it to Hikaru and watches him take a drag. Pavel is sitting with his knees pulled to his chest, his head resting on them, and he's smiling like he actually thinks Hikaru is the one here who is too good to be true. Hikaru hands the cigarette back and Pavel lies down beside him, one arm tucked behind his head.   
  
"I wish I had a camera," Hikaru says, watching Pavel blow smoke toward the ceiling, his lips still red and wet from being kissed, cheeks still pink. Pavel smirks at him, and it jabs Hikaru low in the stomach, a shot of liquid heat.   
  
"A camera?" Pavel says. "For me?"   
  
"Yes, for you. For everything in here." Hikaru holds his hands up around his face as if he's composing a shot. Pavel laughs, holding the cigarette just in front of his lips in a way that makes him look both very young and immeasurably mature, world-weary.   
  
"Do I look artful?" Pavel asks.   
  
"Yeah," Hikaru says, breathy and suddenly close to something like tears, but he swallows it down and leans onto Pavel, kissing him and swallowing up his long sigh.   
  
"It's funny," Pavel says, rubbing his nose against Hikaru's. "I feel like I've never really been to America. I was there, but only in classrooms, I don't think I even ate a meal outside of the faculty dining hall. When we go back, I think, you can show me America for the first time."   
  
"I will," Hikaru says, taking the cigarette back. "We can walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. And I'll take you to an A&W. Have you had a cheeseburger yet?"   
  
"No, they don't serve those in the dining hall. Mostly it's tuna and chicken salad. Not very good, to me."   
  
"How about root beer?"   
  
"Of course I've had beer, we have that at home!"   
  
"No, no, root beer, it's different, no alcohol."   
  
Pavel laughs uproariously at the notion of beer with no alcohol, and Hikaru captures the cigarette to stub it out against a teacup saucer before they can set fire to something. He kisses Pavel through his fits of laughter, explaining root beer and tacos and everything else he wants to introduce Pavel to in America. They have sex again, more slowly this time, with Pavel in Hikaru's lap, bouncing down onto his cock with a languid rhythm that drives him crazy. Part of him wants to grab Pavel's hips and thrust up into him until the searing tension of his building orgasm is spent, but he could watch Pavel like this forever, eyes rolling back, drops of sweat streaking from his hair line down to his jaw, and the sounds he makes are even better, soft and astonished, all _ahh_ s and _mmm_ s with Hikaru's name mixed in.   
  
"Your hair's getting longer," Hikaru mumbles deliriously when they're lying together afterward. He doesn't want to fall asleep, because as much as he tries to convince himself that there will be other nights like this, in Japan and then in America, every moment of quiet happiness still feels like something he might not ever get back.   
  
He runs his fingers through Pavel's hair, Pavel's eyes flickering shut as he melts under Hikaru's touch. He's close to sleep, Hikaru can tell, and he tugs on a little curl that's begun to grow in at Pavel's temple. Pavel groans in protest and rolls against Hikaru's chest, settling in for sleep.   
  
"You've got one on this side, too," Hikaru says, stroking over another little curl.   
  
"You'll have to snip them off for me," Pavel says, his voice buried against Hikaru's skin.   
  
"What! No, I like them."   
  
"You should have seen me before the camp. I had a lot of them. They used to tease me for them in Berlin."   
  
"Is that why you don't want them growing back?" Hikaru asks. Pavel's shoulders go stiff, and Hikaru feels guilty for the question.   
  
"No," Pavel says. "I always wanted to cut them. My mother wouldn't let me. My father had the same hair, so. She liked it."   
  
"Well, I like it, too," Hikaru says, stroking his fingers through Pavel's hair until it's standing up. Pavel sighs, his shoulders slackening again.   
  
"How do they treat people like us in America?" he asks.   
  
"Not well," Hikaru says, knowing exactly what he means.   
  
"Hmm. That is what I thought."   
  
"It's okay," Hikaru says. He kisses Pavel's temple. "It'll have to be secret, that's all. I'll keep you safe."   
  
"Will you have to get married?" Pavel asks. His eyes crack open a bit with the question; Hikaru can feel his lashes fluttering against his chest.   
  
"No," Hikaru says, though he's really not sure. It would be safer to have a wife; he would be subject to much less questioning by his family, and by other, less forgiving people who might take interest. Maybe he could at least tell his mother and father that he suffered a shameful wound during the war, one that prevents him from being with a woman. But it seems like inviting very bad luck, relying on a lie like that. And anyway, his mother would know that he was lying. She always does.   
  
"I want you to be _my_ husband," Pavel says. Hikaru can feel him flush as he laughs it off.   
  
"Okay," Hikaru says, petting him. "We'll marry in the spring. In a temple of some sort. Jewish, Buddhist, whatever."   
  
"No, I want a proper atheist ceremony in a courthouse," Pavel says, beaming up at him. His smile fades and he squeezes Hikaru's waist. "But I am being serious, Hikaru, a little. I want you to stay with me. You won't go home and forget me, will you? Once you are with your family, your friends?"   
  
"God, no. You won't forget me when you get back to work, will you? Once you're back with the cavalcade of geniuses?"   
  
"What does it mean, cavalcade?"   
  
"It's like, you know, a group -- a group of people -- Pavel, I haven't got anyone back there who means half as much to me as you do, so don't worry." He smoothes Pavel's hair back into place and leans down to whisper in his ear: "You can call me your husband, if you want, when we're alone."   
  
It makes him shudder to say so, as if he's never said anything more dirty, or more embarrassingly true. Goosebumps rise over Pavel's skin, and he stares up at Hikaru with his eyes completely unguarded, which makes Hikaru nervous, and sad, because this is the first time Pavel has looked at him this way. It's more intimate than sex or sharing a narrow futon, and it's gone in an instant.   
  
"Then what will you call me?" Pavel asks, an easy smile returning. "Not your wife," he says, as if that was what Hikaru was thinking.   
  
"I could call you Pasha," Hikaru says, because he hasn't forgotten. "If that's your nickname."   
  
"No, no," Pavel says, frowning and covering Hikaru's lips with his fingers. "Don't call me that. It's cursed. Everyone who ever called me that is dead."   
  
"Okay," Hikaru says, kissing Pavel's fingers. "Sorry. I just thought maybe you missed hearing it."   
  
Pavel sighs and pushes his face against Hikaru's chest again. Hikaru feels wide awake now, heartbroken, because Pavel has a ghost's name that Hikaru is not allowed to use. He's always going to keep the ghost boy away from Hikaru, but Hikaru wants to know the dead part of Pavel, too.   
  
"I thought you didn't believe in curses," Hikaru says when he's not sure if Pavel has fallen asleep or if he's still lying awake. He's perfectly still in Hikaru's arms, eyes closed, but his breath is coming a little fast.   
  
"I don't mean a real curse, having to do with magic," Pavel says. His voice is soft and tired, and Hikaru is sorry for not letting him sleep. "I mean it is cursed for me. It sounds like a bad word, now."   
  
"I want you to tell me everything," Hikaru says, and his voice breaks, catching him off guard. Pavel whimpers against his chest, shaking his head.   
  
"I can't," he says. "I don't have the words in English."   
  
"Then tell me in Russian someday. I don't mean to force you, it's just, I want you to know that you can --"   
  
"I don't have the words in Russian, either, Hikaru."   
  
They both lie awake for a long time, not knowing what to say next. Hikaru feels closer to Pavel than he ever has to anyone. Even as a boy, when he and Meiko finished each other's thoughts, it was nothing like this, two complete people bared to each other. And still, Pavel is so far away, even while he's in Hikaru's arms. It's Hikaru who falls asleep first, and he expects to wake to the jerks and shouts of Pavel's nightmares, but he sleeps through the night in his own fitful way, dreaming that his sisters are throwing spiders in his hair. When he wakes up, it's morning, humid and bright gray. Pavel is gone, and there's a folded note lying in the indention left by his body. Hikaru unfolds it and reads, irritated with Pavel for leaving and with himself for driving him away.   
  
_Went to get cigarettes. See you at breakfast.  
  
\--Pavel_   
  
Hikaru lies on his back and holds the note over his face into the gray light, reading it three times, looking for some secret message. Hikaru will be working in the city with Uhura and Spock today, and already the thought is unbearable, the long hours without Pavel at his side, close enough to touch, though of course he can't risk it outside of this room. Still, having him within sight is a comfort, like sunlight, like dry land.   
  
Hikaru goes to the bath as usual, glad to have it to himself for half a minute, then full of petulant longing for Pavel's company. He must have gotten up early enough to bathe before he went down to town to get cigarettes. He usually doesn't smoke except after sex or a meal, and Hikaru is afraid that it's only an excuse to put some distance between them. He knows he should pull back, that they've barely known each other for a month and a half and there's plenty of time to learn everything, but then again, no, that isn't something he knows. It's only what he hopes, that they have a lifetime ahead of them to continue growing closer. He's beginning to feel frantic and possessive, and he hates it, but he can't help it.   
  
He returns to his room and changes hastily from the yukata to his uniform, feeling antsy. The light gray clouds outside are growing darker, and he hopes Pavel won't get caught in the rain on the way back to the inn. He thinks of Pavel saying he wanted Hikaru as his husband and shudders again, full of humiliated happiness. He imagines the two of them in a little house close to Berkeley, living among Pavel's colleagues, Hikaru working some shitty job and coming home to find Pavel cooking him dinner. The absurdity of the idea is startling but addictive, and as Hikaru heads to breakfast he allows the fantasy to continue: they would eat at the kitchen table, drink a lot of wine, talk about everything, then they would leave the dishes in the sink and Pavel would curl into Hikaru's lap to listen to the radio. There would be coffee and cigarettes, maybe some drunken slow dancing after the evening news, and, upstairs, a big bed four-poster bed.   
  
He feels so foolish thinking like this that he actually blushes as he sits down to breakfast. It's easy to lose a sense of reality in a post-war nightmare; everything around him feels like a shadow superimposed over the real world. He's a living person spending time in a ghost world, and he's not sure which Pavel is yet: one of the ghosts he'll leave behind, or another survivor who will escape with him when the mission ends. Often it feels like Pavel is a ghost and Hikaru is, too, and that they'll be stuck here, dreaming of America and root beer, half-alive for each other.   
  
The only other person who arrives for breakfast is Dr. Scott, and Hikaru begins to worry that he's missed Spock and Uhura as the hour approaches nine o'clock and the thunder begins to rumble outside.   
  
"Did the Jeep leave without you?" Hikaru asks Dr. Scott, who looks up from his newspaper.   
  
"'Aye," he says. "I gave Jim the keys today, he's driving McCoy down to the tents. They're cleaning up now, moving the dead from the hospitals to make way for the barely living."   
  
"They didn't drop Pavel in the fields by himself, did they?" Hikaru asks, his heart rate picking up as thunder cracks heavily enough overhead to make the lights flicker.   
  
"No, the weather's too bad to go out there today," Dr. Scott says. "Even Uhura and Dr. Spock are staying in. There's a big storm coming."   
  
"Have you seen Pavel?" Hikaru asks, hurrying to finish his rice. It's rude to leave any, but he has no appetite. He imagines Pavel up in his room, waiting for him, windblown but dry; the rain hasn't started yet.   
  
"I haven't," Dr. Scott says. "Jim must have told him the plan this morning, he probably went back to bed. Good day to stay in, I think."   
  
"Yeah," Hikaru says, standing. He's surprised Jim and McCoy didn't ask him to come along to the tents, but maybe they didn't know that Spock and Uhura wouldn't be going out. The storm is getting worse outside as Hikaru walks past the hall windows. He sees the innkeeper outside at the bath when he passes it, taking down the lanterns. Hikaru starts to walk past, eager to get to Pavel, but then feels guilty and walks outside to help the old man.   
  
"Your friend was here without you this morning," the old man says, shouting over the storm as the wind picks up around them. "For a long time."   
  
"He's fine," Hikaru says, mostly to himself, though he's beginning to wonder. He and the old man stow the delicate lanterns in a cabinet behind the bathing area, and Hikaru helps him shut the heavy door that is usually open to the bath.   
  
"My granddaughter speaks well of you," the old man says, sitting on a stool beside the cabinet to catch his breath. "I had my concerns about a Japanese man who came here with these others. You aren't looking for a Japanese wife, are you?"   
  
"No, _ojisan_ , sorry."   
  
"Yes, that is what she told me. Alright, okay. Listen, I worry about her around these others. My wife thinks I should have sent her to the country when they came, but Mai wouldn't have it. Her father is dead and I spoil her. Now I'm afraid every day that she will marry one of these Americans."   
  
"American husbands are not all bad," Hikaru says, ready to end this conversation so he can search for Pavel. The rain has finally begun outside, pelting the stones around the bath and making great towers of steam rise from the water.   
  
"Alright, go find your friend," the old man says with a wave of his hand, as if he's read Hikaru's mind. "My granddaughter is very fond of him, you know. Not that he's one of the ones I'm worried about! She calls him a little sheep."   
  
Hikaru sniffs with laughter as he walks off, though it's a bit of a stab to hear Pavel referred to as little. _Little Pasha, do you know what your name means?_ Hikaru struggles to envision the man who died trying to protect Pavel. He must have been handsome, relatively young-looking, maybe with just a bit of gray in his hair. Hikaru imagines a universe in which Pieter had survived, only to realize his love for Pavel and leave his family to move Pavel into a cottage in the Russian countryside, where he would hold Pavel in his lap while they listened to grave things on the radio, cozy in the knowledge that together they had been strong enough to claw their way out of hell. Only they hadn't been. Pavel talked about an escape plan that went awry, the reason Pieter was killed. Hikaru wonders which of them was more enthusiastic about trying to escape, and which of them more reluctant.   
  
Up in his room, Pavel isn't waiting for him, and he doesn't answer when Hikaru knocks on his door. He tries the knob and it's open, the room dark and the storm raging outside. Hikaru's heart aches at the thought of Pavel caught outside in this weather, stumbling and shivering and blinded by the rain. He goes back to his own room, searching for a new note, but there's nothing. His heart has begun to race by the time he returns to the dining area, as if he could really lose Pavel to a storm. He tells himself that soon he'll find him dripping wet and have the excuse to fuss over him, to dry him off and wrap in blankets, his lost little sheep.   
  
When he can't find Pavel anywhere in the inn, he hurries out into the rain without a thought, wincing against the cold and completely drenched within four steps. His vision is tunneling the way it did that night when he lost his virginity to Pavel, when they were headed up to their room at the inn in Kyoto. He can't focus properly on the present with the great sense of moving inevitably toward the future pressing in all around him, a whisper that endlessly repeats between his ears: _You will remember this forever_.


	6. Chapter 6

All the way down the hill to the village, Hikaru is still hopeful of finding Pavel, slogging through the mud, clinging to the rock wall that lines the road; he can hear the way his name will sound when Pavel shouts it out in relief. Nobody says his name like Pavel does. It's not just the accent. Pavel always says it the way he would now, if Hikaru found him: as if he's fighting his way through a storm and Hikaru has appeared through the gray curtain of rain to save him.   
  
When Hikaru reaches the village his pants are so muddy he can barely walk, and the streets are completely empty, the town's homeless population crowded under the awnings of the train station, curled against each other as if, until the rain ends, they're family. Hikaru begins to check the shops, starting with the sparse little grocery that sells cigarettes at prices only the occupational forces can afford.   
  
"Was there a white man in here this morning?" Hikaru asks, breathless and disheveled; the small man behind the counter scowls at him as he tracks mud across the cement floor.   
  
"A lot of white men come in here all the time," the man says, as if he can hardly believe this is true.   
  
"About my height," Hikaru continues. "Skinny, short hair, green eyes."   
  
"I don't know."   
  
"He was buying cigarettes."   
  
"You people can catch your own bandits," the man says, frowning. Hikaru knows he wouldn't speak to a white man in uniform this way, but he's too lost to his growing terror to even work up a proper rage.   
  
"Even if he was here, he's gone now," the man says, scoffing. "What difference does it make?"   
  
Those words feel like blows to the head as Hikaru heads back out into the rain. He goes into every shop, his raving increasingly angry, as if these people owe him information about Pavel, as if they are actually withholding something. The irony doesn't escape him, as he heads to the train station to ask the hapless people huddled there if they've seen anything. He knows now why the people who asked him about their lost relatives pawed at him as if he could tell them something. The real panic will set in as soon as he stops asking, so he asks everyone he sees.   
  
"Have you seen a _Roshiajin_ around here?" he says, again and again, to the people taking shelter in the station. They frown at him as if he's mad, until finally a boy with hollow cheeks pulls on his sleeve.   
  
"There are _Roshiajin_ in the village, they have a room in town," the boy says. "Did they steal from you? My mother says they're thieves."   
  
"Where, where are they staying?" Hikaru asks, grabbing the boy's arms. The boy's eyes snap open with fear, and his mother appears at his side.   
  
"Please," Hikaru says as she drags him away, back into the fidgeting crowd, who are all looking at him with suspicion now. "Please, I'll give you money, I'll give you food, anything, just let him show me --"   
  
"He can't go out in the rain," the boy's mother says, holding him to her. "He'll get sick."   
  
"They rent the room above Yoshiku- _san_ 's shop, in the center of town," the boy says, squirming away from his mother as if he's embarrassed by her. "I can show you, if you pay me."   
  
"Kenji!" his mother shouts.   
  
"Please," Hikaru says, pulling yen from his pockets in handfuls. The crowd stirs curiously. "If he gets sick, you can bring him to the inn," he says to Kenji's mother. "There's a doctor there."   
  
"Your promises don't mean anything!" Kenji's mother shouts. "Look at what you're wearing! Who are you? How dare you ask anything of us!"   
  
"Mama!" the boy shouts, glowering back at her.   
  
"You can have the money," Hikaru says, shoving it into Kenji's hands. He knew there was something wrong when those Russians stepped in front of him and Pavel last night. Maybe Pavel lied, maybe he does know them and they threatened him.   
  
"Just tell me how to get there," Hikaru says to Kenji, who nods. He points to a water tower over a building in the center of town.   
  
"Just below there," he says. He grabs Hikaru's sleeve before he can run out of the station. "Be careful, _oniisan_ ," Kenji says. "They have guns."   
  
Hikaru nods in thanks and runs back out into the rain, cursing himself. He only dressed for breakfast, not the work day, and he left his gun in his room. Still, there's no time to waste, so he runs back to the center of town, his pants black up to the knee with mud, scraping against his legs like sandpaper. He slips when he finally reaches the building with the water tower, and lands on his hands and knees in the mud, out of breath and barely able to see straight, panic flashing through him. He knows he's in no shape to confront the Russian men, that he should come back later with Jim and McCoy and a gun, but he's worked himself into an unstoppable frenzy, and he can't walk away while Pavel might be in there, hurt.   
  
He finds a rickety staircase on the side of the building that leads up to a second floor door, and he pounds on it, ready to kick it in when one of the Russians they saw the night before answers, frowning at him and seeming now as if he's at least three feet taller than Hikaru, who is so exhausted from his hours spent running around in the downpour that he could be felled with one punch.   
  
"What do you want?" the man asks Hikaru.   
  
"Who the fuck are you?" Hikaru manages to ask, panting out his breath and leaning on the railing by the door.   
  
"Who am I?" the man asks with a scoff, stepping out onto the awning to tower over Hikaru. "Who are you, _makaki_?"   
  
"You saw me last night, I was with my friend, you called him comrade," Hikaru says, looking past the man into the dank room behind him where the other Russian is standing, arms folded across his chest, regarding Hikaru with bored malice.   
  
"I don't know, maybe," the bigger Russian says. "All you _makaki_ people look the same to me."   
  
"You don't know who the fuck you're dealing with," Hikaru says, trying to puff up his chest while he plots about how he can get into the room and get Pavel out of it without getting them both killed -- if Pavel is even in there. There's a growing seed of doubt at the back of his mind. When the boy at the station mentioned the Russians Hikaru had been certain that they had done something with Pavel, but now he's not so sure. They weren't reluctant to open the door and there are no panicked shouts coming from behind their massive shoulders. What if he and Pavel simply missed each other as Pavel was on his way back to the inn? He might not have taken the main road; Pavel is the type who would find alternate paths through the woods. Hikaru learned in Kyoto that he's fond of scenic routes.   
  
"Pavel -- the man I was with yesterday -- he's part of a military operation. We'll come after you, all of us --"   
  
"Are you stupid?" the Russian says, bending down to narrow his eyes at Hikaru. "You think I've done something to your little friend? Why don't you look in here." He throws the door open hard so that it slams against the wall. "We don't even have a bathroom in this shithole," he says as Hikaru's eyes scan the room. It's true that there's nothing in it but a dirty mattress on the floor and a trunk overflowing with clothes in the corner.   
  
"Now you can walk down those stairs or I can throw you down them," the Russian says, pointing. "And you'd better not come around bothering us again. I'm not afraid of the Americans, and definitely not afraid of some little _makaki_ dressed up as one."   
  
Hikaru stumbles down the stairs, humiliated and baffled by his own actions. Why had he come without a doubt that these men had Pavel? Because of the exchange the night before, or because he's certain that he and Pavel are both still cursed, that they'll never leave this country alive? He walks back to the inn as quickly as he can manage, the storm beginning to rumble away and leaving the sky a lurid, pinkish mess of cloud cover, still producing a constant drizzle as Hikaru hefts his mud-heavy legs up the hill to the inn. Mai is sweeping the debris of the storm from the front walkway when he arrives, and she gasps at the sight of him.   
  
"Hikaru- _san_ ," she says. "Were you out in the rain? Don't you know your friends stayed in today?"   
  
"Pavel?" Hikaru blurts, and already Pavel's name feels like something he shouldn't say. "He's here?"   
  
"I thought so," Mai says, frowning. "I thought you all stayed behind today, except for _Jimu-san_ and the doctor."   
  
Hikaru hurries past her and steps out of his shoes in the foyer. He feels guilty about trudging upstairs in his muddy pants, but as soon as he confirms that Pavel is here, safe and ready to laugh at him for his exploits -- if Hikaru even decides to tell him -- he'll happily spend the evening helping Mai scrub the floors. He runs up to the fourth floor, his skin chafing raw against his wet clothes, and knocks on Pavel's door just once before throwing it open. His room is empty, everything inside exactly as it was last time Hikaru came looking for him. Hikaru hurries down the hall to his own room, clinging desperately to the image of Pavel in the futon, napping, warm under the blankets, or practicing his alphabet in the notebook, too concerned about Hikaru's whereabouts to sleep. But when Hikaru throws open his door he's not really expecting to see Pavel, because the reality of the situation is beginning to settle onto him. Pavel isn't just out of sight. Something's happened. The air inside the inn feels different, sticky with dread.   
  
Hikaru throws off his wet clothes and dries his raw skin before putting on a clean uniform. He puts on his watch and shoves his gun into his pocket before leaving the room, though he's not sure what good it's going to do him. He's consumed with horrible scenarios that feel like mud bogs in his mind: dirty inescapable things. Pavel could have fallen along the road on the way back to the inn and hurt himself. Bandits might have carried him off before anyone could help him, thinking they can hold him for ransom. He might have been killed by those Russians in town during the confusion of the storm and dumped somewhere. He might have decided that Hikaru was becoming too bothersome and taken a train to the coast before boarding a boat back to Russia or a plane to America. Hikaru never should have said that nonsense about calling him husband; Pavel was only joking and Hikaru took it too far. He never should have tried to call Pavel by his ghost name.   
  
He goes down to the bar, up to the rec room, to the dining room, the bar again. Finally he begins knocking on doors. The first room he goes to is Dr. Scott's, and he answers with bleary eyes and tells Hikaru he's been sleeping all day, and that Pavel is probably just sightseeing. Hikaru goes to Uhura's room next, and she answers wearing a yukata, her long hair down around her shoulders, glasses off. Hikaru never realized she was beautiful, and the prettiness in the concern on her faces seems like a bad omen. Hikaru can sense the presence of another person in the room behind her, though he can't see around her shoulders because she's holding the door close. He's sure it's Spock, but he doesn't care.   
  
"Have you seen Pavel?" he asks. He still hasn't completely regained his breath, and he's beginning to feel like he might pass out. His mother used to tell him that he worked himself up needlessly. He wants her here now to say, _This is needless, you're being dramatic, there's nothing wrong at all_. All he can really envision is her saying _This is what you get for disobeying me_.   
  
"I haven't," Uhura says, stepping out into the hall. "What's wrong?"   
  
"I can't find him," Hikaru says, realizing how hard to explain his frantic need to know Pavel's whereabouts will be. He has to pretend, for Pavel's sake, he has to scale himself back. If this all turns out to be nothing Hikaru will have turned too much attention on them in his panic.  
  
"He went out this morning to get cigarettes and hasn't been back," Hikaru says. "I'm afraid he might have gotten caught in the storm, that he might be hurt."   
  
"Oh, poor Pavel," Uhura says, frowning. "Did you go to town?"   
  
"Yes, I looked everywhere, no one has seen him." He keeps his encounter with the Russians to himself, afraid he'll sound insane if he tells people he was afraid Pavel had been snatched, though he's still not sure if he's decided now that it hasn't happened. He doesn't know what to think, and stumbles against the wall, losing his balance.   
  
"Hikaru!" Uhura says, helping him to stand. "Have you been out in the rain all day looking for him? I think you might be ill, you look so pale."   
  
"It doesn't matter," Hikaru says. "We should -- find Pavel and make sure he's okay."   
  
"Are you certain that he didn't go with Jim and McCoy this morning? Maybe he went to help with the transfer of patients. They probably needed it -- I feel guilty for not going myself, but most of these people don't want me touching them."   
  
"Maybe -- maybe," Hikaru says, feeling foolish for a moment. It's entirely possible that Pavel might have wanted to go with Jim and McCoy to help. Hikaru doesn't know how to explain to Uhura that Pavel would have come back to Hikaru to tell him that he was leaving first, but maybe there was no time. He allows Uhura to walk him back to his room, where Mai is waiting with tea and a look of concern. For a brief moment, the attention of the two women is comforting enough to make Hikaru feel as if he's only spectacularly overreacted. Maybe Pavel left without telling him to punish him for the way he acted the night before, demanding to be told everything as if it would be as easy for Pavel to talk about as the weird outbursts about Majdanek that he was always apologizing for and dismissing.   
  
"This storm is bad," Mai says as she and Uhura sit with Hikaru, watching the color return to his cheeks as he drinks his tea. "It brought wickedness and bad luck with it, I can feel it."   
  
"Don't tell him that, he's already frantic," Uhura says in Japanese, and Mai boggles at her in surprise.   
  
"How do you speak our language?" she asks.   
  
"It's not so hard to learn," Uhura says snottily, and Mai makes an excuse to leave. Hikaru goes to the window and stares out at the rain, which has started up again, though still not very heavily. He's shaking, feeling as if the tea he drank has replaced the blood in his veins.   
  
"Do you speak Russian, too?" Hikaru asks Uhura.   
  
"Yes," she says.   
  
"How did you learn all these languages?"   
  
"I studied them," she says flatly. Her face softens and she gets up, walks to the window and stands beside Hikaru.   
  
"My grandfather was an important man in what used to be called German East Africa," she says. "My family left after the war -- the first war -- when the British and the Belgians took over. I was young and good at languages -- I got it from my mother's side. They'd always been people of influence, and their secret was simply being able to understand many people's languages and dialects so that they could trade in as many communities as they could travel to. I learned English and French in school before we left, and I studied the other languages in other schools. I'd never been to Japan before now, but I have been to Russia. My Japanese is probably my worst, actually."   
  
"It sounds okay to me."   
  
"Well." She grins. "You're not exactly an expert yourself, I imagine. It was your first language?"   
  
"Yeah. I learned English at church."   
  
Uhura laughs. "That is the way it goes, isn't it? But you speak mostly English now, don't you?"   
  
"Sure. My Japanese is rusty, maybe -- what time is it? When do you think the Jeep will be back?"   
  
"I don't know. Relax, Hikaru. Eat something."   
  
"I'm not hungry."   
  
"You almost fainted out in the hall. Maybe you should take a nap. When you wake up, Pavel will be back."   
  
The way she says so makes Hikaru uncomfortable. He wonders if she knows, if she's seen Pavel slipping into his room and heard the moans they try to muffle.   
  
"There's just something about him," Hikaru says, and he goes red when he realizes that he'll incriminate himself further with vague statements like that. "I mean a doomed kind of quality. I don't know, I feel responsible for him. I was sent as a translator but we're also supposed to be protecting you all."   
  
"That's very noble," Uhura says. "Now sit down, and I'll bring you something from the kitchen."   
  
There's a soft knock on the door, which Mai left ajar, and Spock pokes his head inside the room cautiously. Uhura speaks to him in German and he frowns.   
  
"Pavel is missing?" Spock says in English, looking to Hikaru.   
  
"Not necessarily," Uhura says. "He might be with Jim and McCoy, or off in town somewhere, having an afternoon to himself. Though, in this weather --" She looks back to Hikaru, a strained look of hope on her face, the precursor to heartbreak.   
  
"I'm sure he's fine," she says.   
  
"Shall we go look for him?" Spock asks, stepping into the room.   
  
"We should," Hikaru says. "I keep thinking -- he might have fallen --"   
  
"He's not an invalid, for God's sake, he's a very strong young man who's been through worse than a rain storm," Uhura says. She points to Hikaru's futon. "Now sit down. Spock and I will go to town and have another look around, but first I'm going to bring you something to eat."   
  
She leaves the room, her sandals clacking with sharp raps as she walks back to her room to dress. Spock lingers, watching Hikaru and looking more nervous than he did when they were mobbed in the city, though still subtly so.   
  
"I certainly hope we'll find him," he says. "It would be a bad time to be lost in this country."   
  
"We'll find him," Hikaru says, though he doesn't feel confident at all. It just seems like the thing to say.   
  
"I'm sure we will," Spock says, in some attempt at reassurance, not really pulling it off. "He's an extremely intelligent young man. Uhura was right -- he's also quite strong. I cannot fathom what he's been through."   
  
"Me either," Hikaru says. "Sometimes he starts to talk about it like -- like it doesn't mean anything, like they're just regular old stories from his childhood. He'll laugh, but not really. Not like a real laugh."   
  
"I've interviewed many survivors," Spock says. "I almost always come to the conclusion that it would be more lucrative to my research if I interviewed them again in ten years' time. For many of them, their tragedies are still too close to process. Have you heard of post traumatic stress syndrome?"   
  
"No," Hikaru says, not liking the sound of that. "Unless you mean -- like, shell-shocked, like coming back from combat and not being able to talk for awhile?"   
  
"Something like this. For some people, talking can be a way of not talking at all."   
  
Hikaru grunts as if he understands what Spock means. After the attack on the _Franklin_ , Hikaru couldn't really listen to what anyone was saying for a few days, which was not a very good ailment for a translator to have. A doctor diagnosed him with a ringing in his ears, saying he'd been too close to an explosion during the bombing, but Hikaru didn't hear a ringing. It was as if he was listening to everyone from underwater, hearing only the indistinct shape of their words. If Meiko had been around, he knew what she would say. _You got too close to Yomi, otoutosan, too close to the Land of Darkness, now part of you will always stay there, and the living will seem very far away, even when they are right beside you_. Hikaru would have told her that the living had always seemed that way to him, even when he could hear them clearly.   
  
"So he's spoken to you about what he's been through?" Hikaru asks Spock jealously. He feels strange, as if they're talking about someone they both knew long ago.   
  
"No," Spock says. "We speak generally about the travesties of war. He's expressed guilt about his research."   
  
"Do you think he should feel guilty?"   
  
"It can be healthy to acknowledge guilt feelings," Spock says, not really answering the question.   
  
Uhura returns, now dressed in her usual black dress and buttoned black coat, glasses in place and hair pinned up. Mai is lurking behind her as if to make sure that Uhura actually delivers the cold dumplings she's carrying to Hikaru.   
  
"We'll go look for Pavel now," Uhura says, but she waits until she's watched Hikaru eat two dumplings to leave with Spock. Mai slips into the room and stares at Hikaru with a pitying expression.   
  
"So many people disappeared," she says. "After the bombs. Just gone." She sounds as if she suspects that another, invisible bomb has fallen, accounting for Pavel's disappearance. A ghost bomb, launched by the dead to reclaim any ghosts who had managed to remain on earth. Hikaru feels ill, but he keeps eating dumplings, and though he's irritated by Mai's worried looks, he's glad she hasn't left him alone.   
  
When the Jeep finally returns a few hours later, Hikaru goes running downstairs to meet it, Mai following. He sees Jim get out, then McCoy. They're muddy and miserable-looking, and Pavel isn't with them.   
  
"What do you mean, he's missing?" McCoy says as they walk inside, Hikaru furiously explaining. Jim is more serious, staring at Hikaru with a pinched look of concern on his face.   
  
"Please, it's starting to get dark," Hikaru says. "We all need to go look for him. Uhura and Spock are still out there looking, and I looked for hours --"   
  
"What time did he leave this morning?" Jim asks. They're standing in the center of a sitting area in the inn's main lobby, beginning to attract some attention. Dr. Scott wanders over from the bar, and Hikaru sees the owner of the inn watching them from the second floor landing.   
  
"I don't know exactly," Hikaru says, his cheeks burning. "He -- came to my door, it was still dark outside, and asked me if I needed anything from town. He was going to get cigarettes, he said."   
  
Jim licks over his teeth, staring into space as if he's deep in thought. He seems different, suddenly, as if Hikaru has set him into action. McCoy is still incredulous, reluctant to believe this could be serious. Dr. Scott just seems confused, but as if he wants to help.   
  
"There's another thing," Hikaru says. "Last night, he and I were in town, coming back from a restaurant, when we bumped into these two Russian guys. They said something to Pavel, I don't know what it was, and he said he didn't know them but I got the feeling that something weird was going on. He seemed spooked."   
  
"Ah, Christ," Dr. Scott says quietly, and they all turn to look at him. He makes a pained sort of face and shakes his head.   
  
"What is it?" Jim asks.   
  
"Nothing, it's just -- the lad has been nervous about the way he left his country. You know how it is in this field, there's an inner circle of brilliant minds -- I'm not meaning to suggest I'm in it. Pavel is on another level entirely. I got the feeling he was worried that they might -- take action to bring him back to Russia. But I thought he meant by some kind of legal nonsense, arresting him on bogus charges and having him extradited, something like that."   
  
"I went to their apartment in town today," Hikaru says, excited by his own pure terror, which has dumped down from his temples to fill his whole body, the flood gates wide open now. "The Russians -- the ones who spoke to Pavel on the street yesterday. They told me they didn't have him, but they might have already done something with him -- oh, shit, shit --"   
  
"They spoke English?" Jim asks. He takes Hikaru's arm and pulls him toward the stairs, McCoy and Dr. Scott following.   
  
"Yeah," Hikaru says, beginning to shake. "Jim -- I -- he --"   
  
"Where was this apartment? Could you find it again?"   
  
"Yeah, by the water tower. Jim --"   
  
"Here," Jim says, opening the door to Hikaru's room. They all walk inside, and Jim picks up Hikaru's gun, checks that it's loaded and then presses it into his hands. "We'll take the Jeep," he says. "Who else is coming?"   
  
"You really think these guys have him?" McCoy asks, frowning.   
  
"I don't know," Hikaru says, the gun feeling heavy and useless in his hand. "I just had a feeling, when we saw them on the street --"   
  
"It's worth a try," Jim says, already headed for the door. Hikaru has never seen him like this, set on a course and blank-faced with determination, and it makes him feel better as he and the others follow Jim downstairs. Uhura and Spock are just coming through the door when they get there, taking off their shoes.   
  
"Anything?" Hikaru asks, though he knows already that it's pointless to ask. Uhura shakes her head, looking at Jim as he walks past.   
  
"Where are you all going?" she asks.   
  
"To look for Pavel," Hikaru says.   
  
"We're doing this in shifts now?"  
  
"Jim thinks he knows where he is," McCoy says, sounding doubtful. "And apparently we're expecting a firefight. Hey," he says, flattening his hand on Dr. Scott's chest as he tries to follow them out the door. "Navy men only on this one. Scientists can cool their heels here until we get back."   
  
"You might wish you had another if things get tricky," Dr. Scott says, scowling, but he stays in the doorway, watching as Jim, Hikaru and McCoy climb into the Jeep. Hikaru sits in the back, gearing himself up for bloodshed, but when they get to town and Hikaru leads Jim and McCoy up the staircase to pound on the Russians' door, the door creaks open against Jim's fist.   
  
There's nothing inside except a stripped mattress and blood stains in the back right corner. Hikaru doesn't remember making the decision to get down on his knees and frame the largest, darkest spot of blood with his hands, but suddenly he's doing it, and Jim is wrenching him up.   
  
"That wasn't here, it wasn't here before, I would have, I would have seen, wouldn't I have?" Hikaru feels like he's waking up only now to what's really happening. Before, it was nightmarish, far away. Now there is blood on the floor and the Russians are long gone.   
  
"Relax," McCoy says, giving Hikaru's arm a sharp tug. "Maybe the two goons got in a fight with each other before they left."   
  
"They left because I was onto them, because I came here," Hikaru says, beginning to choke on his words.   
  
"But you didn't see anything here before?" Jim asks, and suddenly Hikaru hates his steely calm. He walks away from Jim and McCoy and leans against the wall, both arms trembling as his gun begins to feel heavier and heavier at his hip. He's going to kill someone before this is over. He's going to put the gun against someone's temple and fire until it's empty.   
  
"He's losing it," McCoy says. He's not being flippant; he's so serious that it makes Hikaru laugh. Jim grunts as if to agree with this diagnosis.   
  
"We need to speak to people around here who might have seen them leave," Jim says. "Hikaru, listen. Pay attention! Did they have anything with them, equipment that they would need a car to carry? Did they have weapons?"   
  
"A trunk, they had a trunk," Hikaru says. He makes himself stand up straight, for Pavel's sake, but he can't stop staring at the blood on the floor, as if eventually he will recognize it. "Probably weapons, but nothing they bothered to show me."   
  
"Fuck," Jim says softly. He sighs, his breath fast and choppy. "This is my fault," he says. "I teased him for never leaving the inn."   
  
"Don't be an idiot," McCoy barks. "Let's go find out where these assholes disappeared to."   
  
Jim nods and heads for the door. Hikaru follows, and McCoy stops him, holding his shoulder and looking queasy and regretful, as if he's about to tell Hikaru that he ran over his dog.   
  
"You need to prepare yourself," McCoy says, and the kindness in the words hurts more than the idea that Hikaru ought to take them seriously.   
  
"It's just --" Hikaru says, his desire to keep his feelings for Pavel hidden dwindling down to almost nothing. "Why did it have to be him?"   
  
McCoy sighs. "I think Scotty's right," he says. "The Russians must want Pavel back. Things between us and them are already going to hell, and here we are stealing their best bomb builder. It's the perfect chance, taking him while he's here, with everything in chaos, no real police force to help us, the occupation still trying to get on its feet."   
  
"But they can't do this," Hikaru says. He knows he sounds childish, naive. "They can't, they won't get away with it, we -- we'll get him back."   
  
"If we're going to, we've got to do it before they get him out of the country. Hey, look at it this way -- they want him alive. Who knows how long that blood's been there? They might have tortured POWs here during the war. Someone might have stolen a chicken and killed it up here before they boiled it. Who the hell knows?"   
  
Hikaru nods glumly and follows McCoy down the stairs, where Jim is waiting. He hates feeling like the weak one, already falling apart, but he's the only one here who is in love with Pavel, and who was staking all of his future happiness on him. He lets McCoy and Jim drag him around town, using him to translate questions about the Russians and where they might have gone. Everyone they speak to looks nervous, as if they're afraid they will implicate themselves in whatever crime the Russians have committed. Nobody can tell them anything.   
  
They go back to the inn, and Hikaru shuts his eyes against the Jeep's back window, pretending to believe that there's a chance that Pavel will be there waiting for him, red-cheeked with embarrassment over the fuss that's been made over him. He can't hold on to the fantasy, and it slips away until Hikaru is instead imagining Pavel hurt, bleeding, being shoved onto a boat by the Russians.   
  
"A boat," Hikaru says out loud, sitting up. "They'd have to take a boat if they took him back to Russia, wouldn't they?"   
  
"Sure," Jim says. "But that --"   
  
"And they'd have taken the train out of town -- turn around! We need to go to the train station, I think I know someone there who can help us."   
  
"We have to go back to the inn first," McCoy says.   
  
"What? Why? We're losing time!"   
  
"Because I left my medical bag there," McCoy says.   
  
"And?"   
  
"And if we find him, he might need -- help."   
  
Back at the inn, there's a lot of confused talk; Uhura is agitated and Spock is silent, frowning. Dr. Scott is being too loud and asking too many questions, so Jim corrals everyone into his room to brief them on what's about to happen. Hikaru tries to listen, but he's distracted by the faces of these people who no longer feel like strangers. Jim is stony, transformed by crisis into a man twenty years older, no goofy grins or false confidence. He talks seriously about the possibility that Pavel might be dead. McCoy is touching his chin, staring at the floor. Uhura is holding her hands over her mouth as if all of her study of suffering has not prepared her for this. Spock actually looks sad, as if he knows what will happen next, the dark, inevitable future the others are still trying to fight. Dr. Scott is stunned, frowning like a child who has been told that there will be no Christmas.   
  
"Nobody needs to know about this," Jim says. "Not even Pike. If we went through official channels, it would take too long to mobilize a recovery team, and I'm working mostly by my gut here, we haven't got a shred of proof that those men have Pavel. Is everyone -- comfortable with that? With not mentioning this?"   
  
A weighty silence descends over the room, and at first it makes Hikaru feel panicked, afraid that Spock, or maybe even Dr. Scott, won't go along with this. But he looks at everyone's faces again, and now they're all the same, as if everyone here has been through the same sort of tragedies, things that have led them all to a place where they will not hesitate to go along with what Jim is asking.   
  
"Go and get him," Uhura says. "Hurry."   
  
"I need at least two more guns, first," Jim says. "I think I know where I can get them, but I have to go alone. I'll be back in less than an hour."   
  
"An hour!" Hikaru says. "No -- we don't have that much time, and we've already got two guns --"   
  
"Trust me, we're not going to get anywhere with twelve bullets between us, and we won't have time to reload," Jim says, his voice unrecognizably steady, not quite robotic but too certain to be human. Hikaru scoffs, but doesn't argue.   
  
"I'm coming with you two," McCoy says, lifting his medical bag. "The rest of you stay here. If anyone asks, the boys and I went to a whorehouse outside of town, alright?"   
  
"When will you be back?" Uhura asks. Her once-guarded face has now fallen completely open, and though Spock is still stoic, Hikaru can see a change in his eyes.   
  
"It'll take at least three hours to get to the coast by train," Jim says. "We'll ask Mai what the nearest port is. If we're not back by daybreak tomorrow morning, somebody should get in touch with Pike."   
  
They fall quiet then, glancing at each other nervously, as if everyone is waiting for someone else to reveal that they think isn't going to work. No one dares to voice any doubts.   
  
Jim leaves to get his guns, and nobody asks him where he's going or who he's planning to meet. Hikaru goes upstairs and into his room, every second that passes like a blow to his chest. The notebook he and Pavel used to teach each other new alphabets is on the table, and the sight of it makes Hikaru feel again like he's waking, another layer of reality descending. He tries to avoid the notebook but he can't, and when he picks it up and flips past the rows of letters and phrases and little cartoon pictures, he remembers the letter Pavel wrote. He flips through the pages frantically, his heart pounding as he wonders if the letter has disappeared, too. But it's there, a full page of the letters Pavel never managed to teach him, because Hikaru couldn't concentrate on the lessons while Pavel was lying beside him. He would just stare at Pavel's lips, or his eyelashes, or that scar on his cheek.   
  
The idea has barely formed in Hikaru's head before he's rushing down the hall with the notebook and pounding on Uhura's door. He trusts her as much as he does Jim, enough to show her the only thing he has left now that Pavel is gone. Maybe it will offer some clue.   
  
Uhura opens her door with a look of annoyance that shifts to pity when she sees that Hikaru is the one who has been knocking.   
  
"I need you to read this to me," Hikaru says, handing her the letter. His hands shake as she takes it from him, and again he's afraid that it will disappear, that the words will fall off the page like dust when Uhura attempts to read them, as if Pavel has enchanted the letter against the kind of betrayal Hikaru is now desperately committing. Uhura reads a few sentence, frowns up at Hikaru, and then continues, her mouth falling open and her breath changing, as if she's reading a suicide note, revelations uncoiling as her eyes hurry down the page.   
  
"So?" Hikaru says. "What does it say?"   
  
Uhura looks up at him as if she's suddenly afraid of him, and for a moment he wonders if he's read her wrong. She starts to shake her head very slowly.   
  
"I can't read this," she says.   
  
"What? Why not? I thought you spoke Russian?"   
  
"I do, but." Uhura sounds like she's going to cry. "But I can't -- you don't want me to read this to you."   
  
"What?" Hikaru feels like he did once when he was a boy and all of his sisters ganged up on him, laughing wildly while they beat him about the head with pillows. He's at the mercy of something that he feels like he should be able to conquer, but he can't keep his head still long enough to have a single thought about how he might.   
  
"Is it something bad about me?" Hikaru asks. "Something cruel?"  
  
"No." Uhura frowns. "How can you think -- that he would be cruel to you?"   
  
"Then tell me what it says!"   
  
"Hikaru, it's not going to help you find him, and trust me, you don't want me to read this to you, you don't want to hear this from me."   
  
"Hear what? What is it? What does it say? Uhura, tell me!"   
  
"You don't want me telling you," she says, shaking her head. "Wait until you get him back, have him read it to you, he's the one who should."  
  
"Do you really believe we'll even get him back?" Hikaru asks, and he only realizes that he's shouting when he sees the tears pooling in Uhura's eyes. "Do you? Because if you don't --"   
  
"I didn't," Uhura says, her lips shaking. "I didn't believe it until I read this letter." She pushes it back into Hikaru's hands. "Now I think -- you have to. Now I think you have to get him back."   
  
Hikaru stands there in the hall with the letter pressed to his chest, and Uhura shuts the door in his face. He can hear her crying on the other side, and he thinks, hysterically, that the letter must have said that Pavel is dead. He looks down at it again, holding it like a dried butterfly in his hands, afraid it will crumble. He realizes after ten minutes of staring that he's looking for Pavel's face in letters, waiting for him to speak.   
  
Jim returns with his guns and presses one into Hikaru's hand. There is talking, plans are made, but Hikaru feels like he did after the bombing on the _Franklin_ ; he knows what's being said, but he can't hear the individual words. He follows Jim, nodding when he asks if he's okay. They get into the Jeep, Jim driving and Hikaru in the passenger seat, McCoy in back, the medical bag in his lap.   
  
"We've got to try to negotiate." Jim keeps saying that. "I don't want to kill anyone if we don't have to."   
  
"Jesus," McCoy mutters.   
  
Hikaru envies Jim for not wanting to kill anyone. He can't imagine what that feels like.


	7. Chapter 7

They get to the train station and Hikaru looks for Kenji, hoping he can tell them whether the Russians came through and when. He's nowhere to be found, and they ask the man in the ticket window instead. He tells Hikaru that there were two Russian men who left just after the storm for Hagi, the port city that Mai told Jim would be their most likely departure point if they were leaving the country by boat.   
  
"Was anyone else with them?" Hikaru asks, squeezing the ticket counter with both hands and bearing down on the small old man inside the booth, who is looking at him like everyone here looks at him, like he doesn't know if he should hate Hikaru, or feel sorry for him, or be frightened.   
  
"No one else," the man says. "Two Russians."   
  
Hikaru almost crumbles to the ground, but Jim seems to anticipate this and catches him. Hikaru doesn't want to be caught, he wants to lie on the ground and never move, to let vines and things grow over him and swallow him alive like a person in a fairy tale. That's what this confused grief feels like, something from a children's story that will overcome everything and allow him to just sit down and stop living.   
  
"Maybe they didn't have him after all," McCoy says, the voice of reason. Hikaru isn't sure why, but he knows now that they did. At some point, they had Pavel. They came upon him as he was leaving the cigarette shop, the rain just starting to come down hard. They said friendly things at first, but Pavel was too smart to fall for their act, and his little heart was pounding. He pretended not to be scared, pretended to laugh at their comments about the rain, but as soon as he tried to step around him they invited him up to their apartment, and Pavel knew he couldn't fight them, so he went. Or maybe he did fight them, and maybe the big one with the expressionless face felled him with one tremendous crash of his fist against Pavel's skull, and Pavel woke up in the dark, in that apartment, and they told him, _We're taking you back now_. He would be imprisoned just like he was in Berlin, with no Dr. Pieter to keep him sane.   
  
Hikaru's semi-coherent thought process returns when they're on the train to Hagi, Jim saying it's still worth a try, these guys might still know something, and if they don't, Jim can alert the authorities in Yamaguchi, who will search the town properly.   
  
"What authorities?" Hikaru snaps. "We're the fucking authorities."   
  
"Calm down," Jim says, and Hikaru feels ashamed of himself for making Jim give him an order. Hikaru looks out the window, but everything is dark. He puts his head in his hands, and Jim pats his back, then leaves his hand there.   
  
"Here's what might have happened," McCoy says. "They might have bought only two tickets to cover their asses. They might have stowed Pavel on board without anyone seeing. They would have to, right, if he was pretty beat up? Otherwise people might ask questions."   
  
"They could have handed him off to someone else before they left town," Hikaru says, lifting his head just enough to look at McCoy's knees. "They seemed like thugs."   
  
"No," Jim says. "Not if they spoke English. They weren't just thugs."   
  
"Look, Jim," McCoy is saying. "I don't know if I can -- I mean, I've got a kid I've got to think about."   
  
"I know," Jim says, as if he and McCoy have been friends all their lives, as if he's been to McCoy's daughter's birthday parties. "Don't worry. You'll wait at the station. You've got to be ready to go when we come running back."   
  
"Yeah, and what the hell do I do if you don't come running back?"   
  
"Just get the hell out of there."   
  
McCoy curses in some non-word combination of every swear word in the English language and leans back against his seat, looking out the window at the black nothing out there. He thinks of Pavel that night in Kyoto, telling Hikaru he was perfect. Why had he said that? Because Hikaru stupidly bragged about his A in Physics. The only thing Hikaru is sure of now is that no one will ever love him like Pavel did, and that nothing will ever matter as much.   
  
The train arrives in Hagi at three o'clock in the morning. There's a crowd of fishermen waiting to load it with reeking crates full of sea creatures, shipping them off to the nation's surviving restaurants. There's an atmosphere of something like panic as Jim, McCoy and Hikaru hurry through them, toward the docks.   
  
"It's a fish train," Jim says, as if this means something. "We rode the fish train."   
  
"Goddammit, Jim," McCoy says. He sounds sad, and Hikaru thinks of the way Spock looked before they left. Now it's as if McCoy has seen the future, too, as if it's a contagious condition that is beginning to spread among them. Maybe Uhura saw it, too, when she read the letter. Hikaru is glad that he can't. He takes out one of his guns.   
  
"Here's where we part ways," Jim says to McCoy when they come to the edge of the station. McCoy looks from Jim to Hikaru, making an uncomfortable face.   
  
"Be careful," he says. "You two might be wrong about all of this."   
  
"I don't think we are," Jim says. McCoy sighs.   
  
"That poor kid," he says.   
  
"Exactly," Jim says. He grabs Hikaru's arm and they make for the dock.   
  
Hikaru translates Jim's questions to the fishermen who are hanging around while their sons or grandsons load their catch onto the train. Two white devils? They glance at Jim as if Hikaru is keeping strange company while using that term. Then they point to a boat at the end of the dock. No fishing equipment. Big enough for a long trip.   
  
Jim goes silent on the approach, and Hikaru's vision tunnels to a pinprick without Jim's voice to remind him where he is. Already, having Pavel in his bed is like something that never happened. He feels like he'll hardly recognize Pavel even if they do find him. Something bigger than the two of them has put an entire world between them, something Hikaru won't be able to see through and Pavel won't be able to escape from. Is this what it feels like to know that someone is dead?   
  
It happens fast once they're on the boat. One of the Russians steps out of the cabin holding a length of rope, and Jim and Hikaru both have their guns on him before he even sees them. He drops the rope and shouts something in Russian, speaking to the other man, who is somewhere out of sight.  
  
"--have him," Jim is saying. Hikaru missed the rest. His hearing is coming and going, the world surging and retreating around him. He studies the man who is standing before them, hating that he suddenly seems less kill-able. He's got light-colored eyes, uncanny and sharp like a dog's. A shot is fired from the dark of the boat's wide cabin, and Hikaru hits the deck. He thinks again of the _Franklin_ , the way he had scrambled and had been unable to do anything but tear off strips of his clothes and clumsily wrap the wounds of whoever was around. He remembers the way they moaned, like they were seeing something he wasn't, but of course he was seeing it all, too, though the images just floated on the surface of his brain like things clipped from a newspaper, never sinking in.   
  
The first guy pulls a gun from his jacket and Jim drops him. There's a splash. Behind them, the fishermen must be watching. That's what Hikaru is thinking when the smaller man steps out from the cabin and shoots Jim. He's still thinking about the fishermen, about their sun-spoiled faces and how they will tell their sons and grandsons when they return from the train: _A Japanese man dressed like the occupiers walked onto the Roushia-jin's boat and killed one of them_. Only Hikaru hasn't killed him, he's barely grazed him, but the Russian has dropped his gun anyway, cursing at the wound on his arm, and Jim is on him now, punching him and shouting something about rope.   
  
"Tie his hands!" Jim shouts, and somehow Hikaru is already doing it. He was always good at knots.   
  
"Where the fuck is he?" Jim shouts, punching the man again. They don't have much time. Hikaru ties the man's feet, which isn't easy; he gets kicked in the face twice. He can't feel anything, and he can finally hear the ringing in his ears, which feels now as if it's always been there. Jim's shoulder is bleeding everywhere, so Hikaru tears the sleeve from his jacket and bandages it, amazed for a moment that Jim is speaking to the man he's questioning without Hikaru translating, then he realizes that Jim is speaking English, and he doesn't wait to hear any answers that the Russian, who is only spitting in Jim's face between punches, might give. They don't have much time before the GIs stationed here come down to investigate. He runs into the cabin.   
  
Pavel isn't there. There's no blood, there's nothing. Hikaru stands in the doorway of the cabin, staring at the nothing, thinking of the fields. Disappeared. Which of them had said that? Jim is outside, still trying to shake down the Russian and sounding much less authoritative now, his voice full of unrestrained fury. They made the wrong decision. The other Russian is -- where? Dead? So they were wrong? Or were they right and only too late, Pavel already long gone? Then he sees the trunk, the same one he saw in the apartment in Yamaguchi, and he feels so sick and afraid that for three seconds he can't move.   
  
Walking toward the trunk, he thinks of the day he stole the candy from the dead woman: the slow approach, his stomach churning, wanting to reach the funeral arrangement and also to never get there, wanting someone else to jump into his body and make the decision for him. He kneels down in front of the trunk slowly, shaking, and hears himself make an animal-like sound of despair when he sees that some holes have been drilled into the lid.   
  
There are two latches; he barely manages to open them. He can tell, before he gets the lid open, just from the smell, that there is something dead inside.   
  
"Don't," he says, not sure who he's speaking to or what he's asking for. He hoists the lid open entirely, and for a second he's relieved to see that it's someone else folded into the trunk like a broken doll, not Pavel, because this isn't Pavel, but then, somehow, it is.   
  
He holds his shaking hands over the trunk, over Pavel, for a few seconds, trying to figure out what to do. His body feels useless, made of nothing but trembling wire, no breath. No breath, no breath -- Pavel isn't breathing. Hikaru reaches into the trunk and very carefully begins to lift him, sobbing silently, Jim still screaming at the Russian, or maybe that's just someone screaming in Hikaru's head.   
  
He's afraid to move Pavel, but he has to, because the trunk is a mess of blood and piss and it's broken him, it's snapped him in two. He lies Pavel on the floor and leans over him without really looking - ripped clothes, blood stains, bruises everywhere, and his bones feel loose and disconnected under his skin, as if this is not Pavel but a bag containing his remains.   
  
"Fuck!" Jim is hovering, and Hikaru puts his ear over Pavel's mouth, but even his breath is like that of a dead-person, cold and weak. His eyes are closed, swollen shut, everything limp. Hikaru's vision begins to tunnel to nothing but black, but he blinks it away.   
  
"Oh, fuck, fuck," Jim is saying, all of his confidence departed. "We have to -- get him to Bones -- is he --?"   
  
"He's breathing," Hikaru says, surprised by the sound of his own voice. "He's -- how could they -- they wanted -- if they wanted --"   
  
"Get him up," Jim says, sniffling. "Get him up, Hikaru, help him."   
  
"Wait -- wait."   
  
Hikaru stands and walks out of the cabin, his gun in his hand. Jim follows, pulling at him, begging.   
  
"Please," he says, and Hikaru turns to glare at him. There are no fishermen watching, to his surprise. Nobody would have stopped him anyway.   
  
"Just -- wait," Jim says. He shakes his head, curses, spits. The Russian is begging now, too, first in his own language and then in English.   
  
"Wait," Jim says, lifting his own gun. He's steady again, blinking rapidly until his posture straightens, his chest heaving. "We'll do it together."   
  
"No!" the Russian shouts when they lift their guns.   
  
"Where's the other one?" Hikaru asks.   
  
"In the water," Jim says. "Dead." They're not looking at each other now. The Russian is pleading and thrashing about on the deck, his face wet and bloodied. Hikaru thinks about how Pavel must have begged until his voice was raw.   
  
"On the count of three," Jim says. "So neither of will know who did it."   
  
"I don't need you to --"   
  
"Yes, you do. One. Two." Jim looks at Hikaru, checking to make sure he's serious. Hikaru doesn't look back. The worst thing has happened, and he's not afraid of anything anymore.   
  
"Three."   
  
It's louder and messier than Hikaru expected. He doesn't give himself time to look. He tucks his gun into his jacket and returns to collect what's left of Pavel.   
  
On the way back to the dock, Jim slips in the blood. Hikaru turns, Pavel hanging lifelessly in his arms, and watches Jim scramble to his feet. Only then does he see what's left of the Russian's head, which is mostly his neck.   
  
"Is he alive?" Jim asks, panting as they hurry away.   
  
"No," Hikaru says with a frown, then he realizes that Jim is talking about Pavel. Still, it seems a ridiculous question. Hikaru starts to tell Jim that Pavel has been dead since they got here, and long before that. But he doesn't want to break Jim's heart. Pavel was always looking out for Jim's feelings. He would want Hikaru to soften the blow.   
  
"Hang in there, buddy," Jim says to Pavel, who doesn't hear him. Hikaru feels as if he is the one who is bleeding everywhere, as if Pavel is an organ that is hanging outside his body, something he gathered into his arms so the doctor will have a chance of stuffing it back in. Jim's voice goes quiet at his side. The ringing is gone, too. He only hears a faint, empty buzz, and he knows it's because he's close to _Yomi_ , close to Pavel.   
  
"Jesus, what happened?" McCoy asks when they arrive. He ushers them around the corner of the station and into a dark little storage area, which is empty -- everything that had once been stored, surplus of any kind, has been cleaned out. Hikaru doesn't want to put Pavel on the ground, so he kneels down, still cradling Pavel against his chest as McCoy leans down to examine him.   
  
"He's breathing," Hikaru says. "But. But--"   
  
"He's probably concussed -- fuck, look at these bruises." McCoy examines Pavel gently, poking and prodding, looking for the source of all the blood. He frowns up at Hikaru.   
  
"This isn't his blood, is it?" he asks.   
  
"It's Jim's," Hikaru says, quick with the lie. "He got shot."   
  
McCoy curses and stands to attend to Jim, who protests, asking him to look after Pavel instead. McCoy says something about not being able to do anything for Pavel here, and Hikaru lowers his face to Pavel's forehead. He barely recognizes him like this, his face puffy and purple, his short hair caked with blood. He's got a bad wound healing over his right temple, and Hikaru kisses around the edges of it, not caring if Jim and McCoy see. Hikaru is dead, anyway, he's dead, too.  
  
Jim leaves for awhile, and returns with a truck. None of them asks him how he managed to steal it. He suddenly seems like someone who has stolen cars all his life. McCoy makes a makeshift splint for Pavel's left leg, tying it on with torn strips from the lining of each of their jackets. Jim drives, one-armed, Hikaru in the passenger seat and McCoy in the back, tending to Pavel, who is still unconscious. None of them knows where they're going. Hikaru chews his thumbnail until it bleeds, and then realizes he wasn't chewing the nail at all, but the tip, his actual thumb, chewing it raw.   
  
"Hikaru, I need you to pay attention to the road signs!" Jim shouts. "You know I can't read them."   
  
"Jim." Hikaru stares at the passing scenery as they leave the town, headed for the next one, headed nowhere in the dark.   
  
"What?"   
  
"I want to go back and kill them again," Hikaru says. "I didn't. We didn't do it enough. We didn't kill them enough."   
  
"Oh, fuck, don't lose it on me!" Jim says, punching him. "I've lost some blood, and if I pass out for a second you gotta grab the wheel. Okay? Okay, Hikaru?"   
  
"Is this an Army truck you stole?" McCoy barks from the backseat.   
  
"Don't worry about it," Jim says. "How is he?"   
  
"Beaten up," McCoy says. "But okay." McCoy is pouring water down Pavel's throat, and suddenly Pavel is choking, and Hikaru whips around to see him wincing as McCoy wipes the water from his chin.   
  
"At least two broken ribs, left leg broken in a couple of places, some finger bones feel cracked, and I think they might have broken his tail bone, too."   
  
"Pavel?" Hikaru says desperately, wanting him to contest all of this, as if McCoy is listing charges against him.   
  
"He's got this head injury, too," McCoy says, sighing down at it. "Fucking idiots, they wanted him for his brain so they hit him in the head?"   
  
"Pavel?" Hikaru says again. He wants to climb into the backseat, but he's afraid he'll disturb some careful placement, break another bone.   
  
"He's too out of it," McCoy says, shaking his head at Hikaru. "It's only been -- what? Twelve hours, fifteen? But they really worked him over, I guess they wanted to make sure he stayed knocked out so that he wouldn't make any noise during the train trip. Did they have him in some kind of -- crate?"   
  
"A trunk," Hikaru says. He's still facing the backseat, not watching the road. Pavel is limp again, but he's moaning, and it's slowly beginning to dawn on Hikaru that Pavel isn't dead. Still, something is wrong. If part of him was always dead, he's more dead now than he was before.   
  
"Shit," McCoy mutters. "A trunk. I guess they just kept shoving him in there until he fit."   
  
"McCoy!" Jim shouts. "Jesus!"   
  
"Pavel," Hikaru says again, but Pavel can't hear him, and Jim pulls Hikaru around to read a road sign.   
  
The drive feels endless, and when the sun begins to come up as they start seeing signs that indicate Yamaguchi is near, Hikaru feels as if they really have escaped from Death, as if they've been outside the world for years that felt like only one long night for the four of them. He keeps his eyes on Pavel when Jim allows him to stop watching the road signs, and hates McCoy for holding him, though he's glad that somebody is.   
  
"Should we go straight to a hospital?" Hikaru asks, and McCoy scoffs.   
  
"What hospital?" he asks. "Every hospital on this island is an overtaxed disaster right now. No, the safest place for him is the inn. I've got more supplies there, I can set his bones and give him painkillers."   
  
"So he's going to be okay?" Hikaru isn't sure if he's asked this already, but he can't make himself believe McCoy when he nods firmly.   
  
"He's lucky," McCoy says. "You two saved him."   
  
Hikaru doesn't feel like that's true. He feels like he let Pavel die, and the battered young man who is limp in McCoy's grip is someone else, someone who won't recognize him. Maybe he would feel differently if he were the one back there holding Pavel, or if Pavel would actually look at him. He isn't looking at anything, really, but he's conscious at moments, drinking from a canteen of water that McCoy tips against his lips.   
  
"I actually expected worse," McCoy says, as if Pavel looks relatively healthy. To Hikaru he looks like a badly constructed clay replica.   
  
The sun breaks the horizon as they drive up the hill to the inn. The grounds are quiet, and when they unload Pavel, Hikaru holding his leg out as straight as he can keep it while McCoy carries him, the old man who owns the inn appears at the front door to watch. To Hikaru he suddenly looks so much smaller than he did yesterday, stooped and gray-haired, his wrinkled cheeks hollow.   
  
"What do you need?" he asks Hikaru when they reach the front door.   
  
"Lots of hot water and a quiet place for him to recover," Hikaru says. "And no gossip spread about this, or more people might come looking for him."   
  
"Hot water and discretion, we have plenty of both," the old man says. "The quietest place in the inn is the ground floor suite."   
  
They head for the suite, down a narrow hallway behind the bar. Hikaru and McCoy carry Pavel very carefully, the old man leading the way and Jim trailing behind them. The room he brings them into is larger than any of the ones upstairs, made up neatly with a large futon unrolled in the center. There are sliding doors that lead out to an area of the hot spring that has been fenced in for privacy. The old man hurries away as Hikaru and McCoy slowly lower Pavel onto the futon, and he returns soon after with Mai, both of them bearing buckets. They bring water from the hot spring and set it beside the futon.   
  
"I'm going to get my supplies," McCoy says. "Jim, you should let the others know we're back. Hikaru, stay with Pavel."   
  
Hikaru resents the fact that McCoy thinks he needs this instruction; he's never leaving Pavel again. He kneels at Pavel's side and takes his hand. Pavel is wincing, his swollen eyes still shut tightly, but he's still not making a sound.   
  
"Pavel, I'm here," Hikaru whispers in English when only the old man and Mai are left in the room, both of them hovering, Mai making sorrowful little noises and holding both hands over her mouth as if she understands, like Hikaru, that some part of Pavel was not rescued.   
  
"You're safe now," Hikaru says. The shakes begin to hit him then, and for a moment he's afraid he'll throw up. Didn't he throw up already? Yes, on the train. And before that -- in the fields. But that was a long time ago.   
  
" _Oniisan_ ," Mai says, so softly that for a moment Hikaru mistakes her voice for that of his youngest sister, who calls him _older brother_ just like that when she's afraid of Hikaru's dark moods.   
  
"Will he be alright?" Mai asks, and Hikaru nods, his eyes filling with tears. Pavel's hand is limp and indifferent in his.   
  
"Okay," McCoy says, bustling back into the room carrying a large duffel bag. "I brought all the supplies I could, I've got padding and bandages for a cast and we can make a plaster in one of these buckets. I hate to do it like this but I can't leave him in splint, there's too great a risk he'll do unintentional damage when he moves. Hikaru, why don't you and the girl clean him up while I get this ready? Once the wounds are clean I can start bandaging, then we'll set the broken bones."   
  
Hikaru takes a deep breath and nods, accepting a bar of antibacterial soap from McCoy. He and Mai dip clean towels in the hot water and very carefully wash Pavel, pulling his ripped clothing away as they work. Mai puts a towel over Pavel's midsection so that he'll have some dignity, and Hikaru is relieved to see no bruising between his legs. Pavel is expressionless beneath his bruises, even when Hikaru strokes secret fingers along his side while the others aren't looking.   
  
When the crusted blood has been cleaned away McCoy applies ointment and then bandages. Hikaru is tasked with sitting at the end of the futon and holding Pavel's foot completely steady. The process of making the cast for his leg lasts well into the afternoon, and Hikaru keeps sneaking glances at Pavel's face, waiting for his eyes to open. Pavel just lies there like driftwood, his lips parted and his eyebrows barely twitching as McCoy sets his broken bones.   
  
"Thank God the tail bone's not actually broken," McCoy says with a sigh, wiping his face. "I don't even want to think about treating that here, with these limited supplies. We'll have to get him back to the States as soon as possible, but this is the best he's going to get here, and it ain't bad, if I do say so myself. Those ribs will bother him more than anything, but they should heal in four weeks, the breaks feel clean. Of course, you'll want to have him X-rayed when he gets home."   
  
"Is he still unconscious?" Hikaru asks as he helps McCoy and Mai clean up.   
  
"No, he's conscious," McCoy says. A wary look shadows over his face as he watches Pavel, who isn't moving, only lying there under a sheet that Mai pulled over him after his casts had dried enough not to stick to it.   
  
"He's just in shock, I expect," McCoy says. "Maybe Dr. Spock could help him with that. Or you." McCoy gives Hikaru a meaningful look.   
  
"Should I talk to him?" Hikaru asks. Mai is looking back and forth between the two of them as if she understands the conversation.   
  
"I don't know," McCoy says. "I'm not much of an authority on the human mind. All it does is make me despair in confusion, if I'm honest. But if I were you, I wouldn't leave his side."   
  
"I won't," Hikaru says, though he's actually afraid to be alone with Pavel. Jim appears to lurk in the doorway and stare at Pavel with a wounded expression on his face, as if Pavel is breaking his heart, too. The old man arrives with a bowl of clear broth and Hikaru props pillows behind Pavel's head and helps him drink it while Mai wipes away the soup that dribbles from Pavel's lips. Pavel's eyes crack open as he drinks the soup, just barely, but he doesn't look at anyone.   
  
"There you go, that's good, this will make you feel better," Hikaru says, realizing belatedly that he's speaking Japanese. Mai takes the bowl away and leaves with the others, McCoy lingering and looking down at Pavel with a frown.   
  
"I'll be at the bar if he needs me," McCoy says.   
  
"Don't get drunk!" Hikaru says hysterically, and McCoy glares at him.   
  
"You don't need to worry about that," he says. "Anyway, there's not much I can do for him now. After we get some real food in his stomach I'll give him some painkillers, but I think we should take it slow with food. Maybe in five or six hours he'll be ready to eat some rice. Keep him hydrated, and check his body temperature every twenty minutes or so. If it fluctuates, let me know."   
  
"Alright." Hikaru takes a deep breath and looks down at Pavel, whose eyes are closed again. "Did Jim tell everyone -- what happened?"   
  
"He told them that Pavel is back," McCoy says with a nod. "They're all real glad to hear it. He's not up for visitors yet, though. You just keep him company for now."   
  
Hikaru nods. He wants to thank McCoy, but he doesn't have the words. When McCoy is gone, the room feels so silent. Outside, it's somehow almost evening again, the day maturing beautifully as dusk falls. The doors to the hot spring are still open, and Hikaru gets up to open them wider, hoping the fresh air will rouse Pavel to at least look at him. He walks back to the futon and kneels down beside Pavel, his legs shaking.   
  
"Hey," Hikaru says softly, taking Pavel's hand. "Are you -- asleep?"   
  
Pavel says nothing, but breathes out in such a way that Hikaru knows he heard him. He strokes Pavel's knuckles, swallowing tears. He needs to bathe and eat, but he can't imagine doing such practical things again. The events of the previous evening are making their way back to him slowly: the explosion of the Russian's head, the smell of death when Hikaru opened that trunk as if it were a coffin.   
  
"You don't have to talk," Hikaru says. He wants nothing more than to hear Pavel's voice, and is afraid he never will again, that his cheerfully morbid outbursts have died off forever.   
  
"I just have to tell you," Hikaru says. "How -- scared I was. But I would have done anything. Pavel." He breaks down, finally, and it feels good for just a few seconds, then horrible when Pavel only lies there, his eyes cracked open as he stares at the ceiling like he's brain dead.   
  
"Please look at me," Hikaru begs. He's got no right to demand anything of Pavel, but he feels like he'll die if he can't at least have some acknowledgment that Pavel knows he's here and doesn't want him to leave. Pavel turns his head slowly and looks at Hikaru, but he might as well be looking through him.   
  
"Please," Hikaru says, kissing his hand. "I love you so much." He's not sure what he's begging for now, except to hear the same from Pavel, who only blinks at him.   
  
"They'll come for me again," Pavel says. His voice is gravelly and unrecognizable.   
  
"No." Hikaru shakes his head. "Never again. We -- killed them, Pavel. They're dead."   
  
"Then someone else will be sent." Pavel looks away again, up at the ceiling.   
  
"That's not -- no -- and if they do, we'll protect you."   
  
"Who is we? I knew I would never see America again. I felt it."   
  
"Pavel, you will, we're going to take you home for X-rays, and --" Hikaru isn't sure how to continue. For X-rays and root beer? He feels so inadequate in the presence of Pavel's grief, which is choking the air out of the room. It's as if he's mourning his own death and Hikaru has been left to comfort the corpse.   
  
"Everything's going to be alright," Hikaru says, wiping at his face. Pavel's eyes are dry.   
  
"Pieter said that to me," Pavel says. "It doesn't mean anything. I should never have gone to school. At least they would have killed me with my parents. That's why I keep wishing I was with them when it happened. My body knows that I should have died then, too."   
  
"Pavel, you're upset. You can't mean that. I know you don't really want to die. You want to live, with me, remember? Remember what you said?"   
  
"I'm sorry, Hikaru," Pavel says, pulling his hand away. "I forgot myself."   
  
"You -- what?"   
  
"I had to forget or I couldn't have gone on."   
  
"Just -- don't try to think about everything right now," Hikaru says, frantic at the idea that Pavel might make decisions in this half-alive state, detached from all his old dreams.   
  
"All I ever do is try not to think about everything," Pavel says, and he sounds sad, but as if it's mostly pity he's feeling, not for himself but for some now-remote person he once was.   
  
"Do you need anything?" Hikaru asks. "Something more to eat? Some water? Here, drink some water, McCoy wants you to stay hydrated."   
  
Pavel accepts the water without argument and then lies back, shutting his eyes. Hikaru lies beside him and tries to work up the nerve to scoot closer, afraid McCoy or Jim or Mai will burst through the door and catch him. He's afraid, too, that Pavel will shrink away from him, repulsed by his childish, earth-bound concerns. He wraps Pavel's hand into his and leans in close enough to breathe in the soapy, metallic scent of him.   
  
"I was so afraid," Hikaru whispers. "You should have seen me. I ran all over town looking for you. As soon as I saw those men from the night before, I knew."   
  
Actually, he hadn't known, he had walked away like a coward while Pavel was stuffed into that trunk, maybe listening, a gag in his mouth. Hikaru wonders if this is why Pavel seems so angry with him.   
  
"Did you really kill someone, Hikaru?" Pavel asks. His eyes are still closed, as if he's having this conversation with a Hikaru who has appeared to him in a dream.   
  
"Yes," Hikaru says. He feels a flush move through him with the admission, like he's owning up to kissing or fucking somebody, some guilty, secret pleasure.   
  
"Then I've ruined you, too."   
  
"Pavel --"   
  
"You shouldn't touch me, I'm poisoned." His fingers curl around Hikaru's hand even as he says so. "I should have been a clockmaker. My father would be so ashamed of me if he knew what I was working on at university, before they took me. He lost a leg in the first war. Did I tell you that? That my father had a wooden leg? He made it himself, he was always making useful things. He hated guns. He hated anything automatic. He said automation would cost the modern world its soul. He was right. They made the bombs in a factory. I wonder how many more they have hidden away. I dreamed, when I was unconscious, that they were falling everywhere like rain."   
  
"Oh, God," Hikaru says, crying again. He leans in to rub his face against Pavel's bare shoulder, sobbing onto it. "I was afraid I'd never hear you talk like this again. I was going to kill myself if we couldn't find you. If you want go mad then we can go mad together. I don't care, I don't care where we go. Just stay with me, just never stop telling me everything."   
  
"I haven't told you everything," Pavel says. He turns to look at Hikaru, his eyes suddenly wide open and cold. "Hikaru. I haven't told you anything."   
  
"So don't tell me, whatever you want, fuck." Hikaru dissolves into tears, and Pavel sighs, his breath pushing into Hikaru's matted hair.   
  
"You're dirty," Pavel says. "Look at this, there's blood on your ear. You should wash yourself."   
  
Hikaru does as Pavel commanded. He goes out to the courtyard with the hot spring and washes himself under the shower, not bothering to take any time to sit in the bath. He hurries back to Pavel, shivering as the night begins to come on. Pavel is asleep, one hand on his chest. There's a knock on the door, and Hikaru dresses quickly. He opens the door just a crack, sticking his head out. It's Jim, and he still looks heartbroken, his shoulder bandaged heavily.   
  
"Is he okay?" Jim whispers.   
  
"Yes," Hikaru whispers back. "Or no -- but I think he's going to be. Just give him some time. Tell Mai to bring some more soup in a few hours."   
  
Jim nods and leaves, backing away slowly, as if he's reluctant to go. At the end of the hall, Hikaru can see Dr. Scott and Uhura staring down at the suite curiously, looks of concern on their faces. Hikaru waves to them mirthlessly before ducking back into the room and shutting the door behind him.   
  
For a long time he just lies beside Pavel on the futon. He falls asleep, but only for a few minutes at a time, waking in a panic and clutching at Pavel weakly, not wanting to aggravate his injuries. Pavel is motionless and silent, though Hikaru doesn't get the impression that he's doing much sleeping, either. The sunset is so glorious behind them that Hikaru can see the orange and pink glowing on the polished wooden floor.   
  
When Mai comes with the soup, Pavel is able to drink from the bowl himself, but Hikaru still treats him like an invalid, wiping his mouth after every sip. Pavel doesn't protest, and when he rests afterward Hikaru hurriedly drinks down a bowl of soup himself, his stomach growling in complaint at the meager meal. After Mai leaves, they lie together, Pavel on his back and Hikaru facing him.   
  
"Do you need to go to the bathroom?" Hikaru asks.   
  
"No."   
  
"Dr. McCoy is going to get you some crutches. We'll have you walking in no time. Are your ribs bothering you? Do you want me to find him and ask him for a painkiller?"   
  
"No," Pavel says again. He's listless, resigned.   
  
"Do you want to sleep?"   
  
"No."   
  
"Would you mind if I kissed you?"   
  
Pavel pauses to consider this question. He turns toward Hikaru. His face is painful to look at, purplish around his eyes, his nose swollen, puffy cuts on his cheeks and forehead.   
  
"Unless it would hurt," Hikaru says hurriedly, something small and fragile dying inside him, something he shouldn't have allowed to develop, because he can't be trusted with such things.   
  
"It won't hurt," Pavel says. His voice is very soft, and then, finally, his eyes are wet. Hikaru moans with sympathy and leans over Pavel to very carefully kiss his lips. He licks at Pavel as if he's a kitten, and Pavel responds with a weak sigh and a few answering licks, sniffling.   
  
"I love you," Hikaru whispers. He arranges himself so that he's leaning over Pavel without putting any weight onto him, wishing that he could crush Pavel into his arms.   
  
"You don't know me," Pavel says, shaking his head. "I am a monster, Hikaru."   
  
"No, you're not."   
  
"I belong in a world full of monsters. That's why they keep taking me and bringing me there. They will never give up, and you and Jim won't be able to stop them. They're reclaiming me. Maybe they deserve to."   
  
"Pavel, you're not a monster. The bombs saved lives, too, you know. Russian lives, and American lives -- I was on a ship the Japanese bombed, the _Franklin_ , I never told you, I don't know why. Everyone is monstrous in war, but you don't deserve to be hurt. Goddammit." Hikaru pinches his eyes shut and rests his forehead lightly against Pavel's. "Never again, I swear to God, I will never let anyone hurt you again."   
  
"Did they beg for their lives?" Pavel asks. "Before you and Jim killed them?"   
  
"Yes," Hikaru says, though only the one did. "Yes, they begged."   
  
Pavel touches Hikaru's shirt, smiling in a way that worries him. It's dark in the room, and Hikaru wants to put on a lantern. He's afraid of the dark, afraid that it will touch Pavel and change him back into a ghost. He's always going to be a little bit of both, weaving between the two worlds. Once you've seen _Yomi_ it lives forever behind your eyes.   
  
"They told me they had the guards from Berlin, the ones who kept me there to work with their stupid scientists," Pavel says. He's still poking at Hikaru's shirt, drawing nonsensical patterns onto it with his finger. "They said they were holding them in Moscow before their execution. It might be true, but I doubt it. They told me they would throw me in with them if I didn't come willingly. When I fought to get away they said -- they said--"   
  
Pavel looks up at Hikaru then, and Hikaru thinks this must have been what it was like, watching the bomb fall to earth, hearing it scream against the wind.   
  
"They said I must have missed getting fucked by those Germans, that was why I was making them do this the hard way." Pavel laughs crazily, looking away again. "I thought, how could they know? How could they know unless they really have them? Pieter wanted to escape because he knew it was going to happen. I begged him not to try, but he knew. The Russians had started attacking Berlin -- it must have been January. They didn't tell us what year it was, let alone what month. But it must have been January. Very cold. They undressed me before they hung Pieter, just to show him that he'd failed. As if he didn't know." Pavel takes a handful of Hikaru's shirt and looks up at him with incredulous rage. "As if he didn't know."   
  
"Pavel," Hikaru says. His mouth is so dry that the word barely makes sense. It sounds like a pained moan more than a name.   
  
"How can I tell people that it was a mercy when they sent me to the camp to die? How can I tell people that? It was the scientists who arranged it, the Germans from the university in Berlin. They saw what was happening."   
  
"Pavel -- oh -- Pavel, I --"   
  
"The worst part was that only one of them really wanted to do it. Only one! It was in his head all along, and the escape attempt was what gave him an excuse, really, that and the Russians coming to the city. He would say, 'Do you think they are coming for you?' and laugh, as if I thought that -- he was the one who seemed to think so. Sometimes I think he must have been in love with me, in some strange way, the only way he knew. Henrik, that was his name. I hated him so much. We were obsessed with each other. I wanted him to think that I was not afraid of him, and he wanted to make me afraid. It was all we cared about by the end. I hated him most of all for making the other three do what they did. One of them, the stupid one, maybe he'd been on the fence, or maybe he was just up for anything, but the other two, I could tell they didn't want to. The looks on their faces, like they were sorry while they did it, and disgusted, and the way they looked at me later, blushing. Blushing, can you imagine? Sometimes I think I must have invented that, but if I doubt one part then I've got to doubt all of it."   
  
Hikaru holds Pavel's face, waiting until Pavel finally looks up at him. His eyes are wet, but not very.  
  
"I'm a monster for surviving all of that," Pavel says. "Only a monster could."   
  
"You don't really think that," Hikaru says, holding back his sobs. They're present enough to make his voice break and roll as if he's holding an ocean in his throat, trying to swallow it down.   
  
"When they took me again," Pavel says, as if the Russians and the Germans had always been working together, or as if it doesn't matter that they weren't, "I thought -- so this is my life. The relief of having nothing to work for but survival. This is what I was made for. I'm so good at it, Hikaru." He laughs in a weak little bark, tears spilling down his cheeks. "It makes me think I could believe in God, because who else could write such a melodrama? It's all been arranged for me, I've only got to lie back and take it."   
  
"Pavel, please," Hikaru says. He's crying in such sharp jags that his own ribs feel broken. "I promise it's over, I promise, I'm here, I won't leave you."   
  
"I know you won't," Pavel says. He wipes at his face and curses when he touches his bruises, remembering them. "It's me who will leave. I left home against my parents' wishes, I left home to go to school. I left you to have a walk and buy some cigarettes. I didn't want to lose my parents, I didn't want to lose you. But that is what I do, I lose and lose and lose and stay on my feet."   
  
"You haven't lost me," Hikaru says. He sobs out a laugh. "And you're not on your feet."   
  
Pavel smiles, but it's a weak, threadbare thing. Hikaru lies down beside him, his head throbbing against the enormous pressure of what Pavel has told him, as if his brain is trying to push the story back out. He waits for it to wreck him, wanting it to, because it should, but it only makes him more determined to have Pavel. Not to save him, because the time for that is past. He just wants to have Pavel, always, even like this, both of their faces wet, Hikaru speechless, Pavel battered down to the bleak honesty of his bones. He'll have Pavel any way he can, and he loves him more for every tragedy he's willing to relive while Hikaru listens and for the meek and monstrous way he's survived them. All that matters now is that Pavel feels like the only person in the world who's ever meant anything, and that Hikaru will only be real as long as he's with him.   
  
"Is it disgusting of me to want to do what they did to me with you?" Pavel asks. "Am I fixated? What would Dr. Spock say?"   
  
"I think he'd say that you would have wanted me anyway," Hikaru says. He kisses Pavel's neck, then leaves his face pressed there, sighing deeply as he listens to Pavel's heartbeat.   
  
"I almost wish we could do it now," Pavel says. His voice is flat and angry, and Hikaru knows he doesn't mean it.   
  
"We can't," Hikaru says. "Your ribs -- and anyway, it's too much."   
  
"Yes, but I feel like a different person when you are inside me," Pavel says. The hardness behind his words is softening, and Hikaru braces himself. "I feel like a person born without arms who has suddenly grown a perfect set of them. Like I don't even know where to start, what to touch first."   
  
Hikaru smiles against Pavel's skin. He's fighting the urge to pull Pavel into his arms, trying to keep his injuries in mind.   
  
"I like that," Hikaru says. "What you said about arms. That's how I feel, too. I never would have come up with such a neat way to describe it, though."   
  
"Such a neat way," Pavel says, smiling up at the ceiling, staring at nothing. Hikaru can hear the last of his resolve cracking apart and falling away. He sits up and looks at Pavel, watching as a little tremble starts on his bottom lip, as if he's afraid of what he'll say next, even after everything that came before.   
  
"Sometimes I can't remember my mother's face," he says, and then, finally, he falls apart, crying so hard that Hikaru can hear the broken places in his sobs that are just pure physical pain, when his ribs ache with it.   
  
It's a crime that Hikaru can't hold him tightly, maybe the worst injustice either of them has known. He does the best he can, hovering and kissing, wiping tears away even as his own drip down onto Pavel's cheeks. Mercifully, crying, like sex, is a state that can only be physically sustained for so long. When Pavel finally wears himself out his face is so puffy and wet that Hikaru doesn't dare to continue kissing it. He strokes Pavel's hair instead, watching the last of his tears trickle away.   
  
"Oh, I don't care what happens," Pavel says, his voice ravaged and very small. "Just always come and get me. Come and get me when I need you."   
  
"I will," Hikaru says. "I will, I promise."   
  
"I thought I was dreaming when I woke up and you were there. Or that I had died and gone to some horribly compromised heaven where I was still able to feel pain."   
  
"I think you were dead," Hikaru says. He feels bad saying so, but suddenly it's clear that it's what they've both been thinking. "But you're not anymore."   
  
Pavel nods. "I had to die so that I could stay alive," he says. "That is the real trick to survival."   
  
There's a knock on the door, and Hikaru kisses Pavel before he goes to answer it. He feels like he's got electricity coursing through him, like he's lit up on every level, heartbroken and hopeful at the same time, his whole system overloaded to the point of ecstatic delirium. He opens the door and smiles at Mai, who is bearing a tray with a steaming hot pot, two sets of chopsticks, and a small carafe of what looks like sake.   
  
"Hikaru- _san_ ," she says, smiling shyly. "Would the two of you like some dinner?"   
  
"Yes, very much," Hikaru says, wiping at his face. He allows Mai inside, and she walks to the futon, kneeling beside it and setting the tray on the floor. Hikaru props Pavel up on pillows, checking his face to make sure that he's ready for this small step back into the land of the living. Pavel watches Mai with genuine appreciation as she divides the contents of the hot pot into two smaller bowls. Hikaru lights a lantern so that she doesn't have to work by only moonlight.   
  
"What a beautiful night," Mai says, keeping her eyes on the noodles and shrimp heads she's apportioning into the bowls. "And how happy we all are that _Paberu-san_ has returned."   
  
"Your grandfather told me that you call him a little sheep," Hikaru says, and Mai looks up with alarm, her mouth hanging open.   
  
"He should not have told you that! I only say so out of affection."   
  
"I know. It's okay. He's a remarkable sheep, though, don't you think? Look at him, look how strong he is despite his injuries."   
  
"All of these kinds of soft creatures are strong," Mai says as she offers a bowl of noodles to Pavel, who bows his head appreciatively, wincing a bit. "It's hardest to be soft and live in the same hard world where all the hard things reside." Mai picks up a set of chopsticks and wraps up a bundle of noodles, holding it up for Pavel to slurp at.   
  
"You can tell her she doesn't need to feed me," Pavel says to Hikaru as he's chewing.   
  
"I think she does need to, actually," Hikaru says. He collects his own bowl and sits beside them, glad for the company of Mai, who carefully extracts the meat from the shrimp heads and presents it to Pavel with a smile.   
  
"What is this gray stuff I'm eating?" Pavel asks.   
  
"Brains," Hikaru says. He helps himself to some sake. "Delicious, aren't they?"   
  
"Actually, yes," Pavel says, frowning. Mai holds a slice of bamboo shoot to Pavel's lips and he eats it. Hikaru laughs at the sight, glad that Mai is here. It was too much, him and Pavel being alone together after everything that happened. It's better, for now, to look at each other over her shoulder, smiling secretly, slurping soup.   
  
Hikaru drinks the entire carafe of sake, which is good quality, cloudy and cold. When he's through, Mai cleaning up the dishes and speaking to Pavel, telling him that he's a very brave boy who will experience good fortune as long as long as Hikaru is close by, Pavel nodding as if he understands, Hikaru walks outside to stand near the hot spring and breathe in its cleansing steam. He turns back and sees Mai waving to him as she stands and leaves with the tray. He takes a last look at the bright, full moon and returns to the room, shutting the door behind him.   
  
"What are you doing?" Pavel asks.   
  
"Nothing," Hikaru says. He slides back onto the futon and curls up beside Pavel. "I think I'm drunk."   
  
"Lucky."   
  
"When we live together in America we'll get drunk every night."   
  
"Hikaru!"   
  
"What? It will be fantastic and you know it. I can already picture the couch we'll have. It's blue."   
  
Pavel laughs and touches Hikaru's face. Hikaru is struck by the images Pavel gave him of what he went through, just for a moment, like a slap. He's glad for it. Pavel must be arrested by the memories so often, and Hikaru feels as if now he can shoulder some of the burden.   
  
"I feel like I'm on the other side of the world now," Hikaru says. He doesn't add that he wishes to God that Pavel could feel that way, too, like he's escaped something for good.   
  
"Will you find your way back again?" Pavel asks. He smiling, but he looks worried, or maybe it's just the bruises on his face, making him wince a little all the time.  
  
"Only if you come with me," Hikaru says. "I'll stay here with you if I have to."  
  
"I think I want to try living on your side," Pavel says, his eyes filling up. Hikaru holds him as close as he can without breaking him. Hikaru has been so ungrateful for so long, it's as if he's spent the past five years in a coma. He's ready to wake up now, and to have Pavel reintroduce him to the world. It's funny now that he once thought it would be the other way around.


	8. Chapter 8

Pike returns to Yamaguchi two days later, and Jim reports that Pavel was robbed and beaten by roving bandits in town and will need to return to America for proper medical care. He doesn't mention the gunshot wound he's hiding under his sleeve, but he does suggest that Hikaru Sulu be sent back with Pavel, because of emotional difficulties. He allows Pike to assume that the emotional stress Hikaru is suffering is due to inner turmoil about the situation in Japan and not related to Pavel's condition. Pike arranges for them both to leave the country in two weeks on a Navy plane. Hikaru will be honorably discharged when he reaches San Francisco.   
  
On their last night in Japan, there is a big farewell dinner with beef and fresh seafood, and Hikaru assumes it was all arranged by Mai, though maybe the old man had a hand in it, too. Hikaru still hasn't learned his name, and for some reason he feels like it would be bad luck if he did. He helps Pavel dress for the dinner, which is tricky with the cast on his leg, and walks behind him as he hobbles down the narrow hall from the suite to a makeshift dining room that has been set up so that Pavel can join the others for dinner. He sits in a chair while the others take their seats on cushions around the low table, and as it has every night since Pavel ventured out of the room for dinner, it seems as if Pavel is a child who has been given the only chair because it's his birthday.   
  
"I can't believe you're leaving tomorrow," Uhura says to Hikaru at dinner, squeezing his wrist.   
  
"I feel like I've been here for years," Hikaru says. The past several weeks have felt especially long, Pavel immobile and always hissing in pain, telling Hikaru that he's alright when he rushes to help him. Hikaru hasn't been back to the city and hasn't accompanied McCoy to the hospital he's been working out of; Pike knows about this and hasn't protested, based on his belief that Hikaru has been emotionally wrecked by the situation in Japan. Hikaru never leaves Pavel's side, and doesn't plan to ever again.   
  
"We're gonna miss you, Checkers," Jim says to Pavel. Hikaru winces at the nickname. Before Pavel was up and about he had regular visitors in the suite, and Jim was the most frequent, showing up even more than Dr. McCoy. Hikaru would practice his Russian alphabet in the notebook while Jim sat Indian-style on the futon and talked with Pavel, who was propped up on pillows. Hikaru resented their bonding a little, but he figured Jim had earned it, and it seemed to cheer Pavel up to talk to someone who saw him as just a plucky kid who'd had some bad luck. They would jokingly argue about whether the Russian or American version of something was better, and Hikaru would smile at them from across the room, pretending not to be jealous.   
  
"I hope your experience here has been valuable despite your misfortune," Spock says to Pavel at dinner. Something about the reserved but sincere look on his face makes Hikaru's eyes burn a little.   
  
"It has been valuable," Pavel says, smiling. He blushes, and Hikaru grins down at his plate.   
  
"Yes, quite," Dr. Scott says. "Though I think I learned more from talking to Mr. Chekov here than I did from field research."   
  
Dr. McCoy is the only one who doesn't speak during that last dinner; even Pike is rather talkative, asking Pavel about his plans for the future. Hikaru glances over at McCoy when Pike excuses himself from the table, saying he's got an early appointment with the governor of Yamaguchi and must head off to bed. McCoy's face is buried in a bowl of rice as he uses the fat end of one chopstick to scoop it into his mouth.   
  
"You alright?" Hikaru asks McCoy, keeping his voice low. The others are laughing at something Jim said, not paying attention.   
  
"Fine," McCoy says, giving Hikaru a look. "Why?"   
  
"You seem kind of gloomy."   
  
McCoy grunts tonelessly, neither confirming nor denying this. Hikaru turns back to his plate, thinking that McCoy must be upset that he's losing the only patient he's treated since arriving who has real hope, a future. He might also miss Pavel just for being Pavel; they have a kind of bond of their own, a similar repressed sadness at the corners of their eyes. McCoy pushes his sadness back with cantankerousness while Pavel just smiles hard enough to fool most people.   
  
After dinner, there's a lot of drinking and embracing. Hikaru and Pavel will leave very early in the morning to drive to Tokyo and board their plane, and no one will be awake to see them off except for Jim, who will drive them to Tokyo in the Jeep. Hikaru hugs Uhura, who promises to come to America to visit him, and shakes hands with Spock, who now looks at Hikaru with a kind of quiet respect, either because he saved Pavel or because Uhura told Spock about the letter. Pavel hugs Spock clumsily, and it seems to take Spock by surprise, but he pats Pavel's back.   
  
"I don't know how to thank you," Hikaru says to McCoy, who is lurking in the doorway as if he's ready to get this over with. "For taking care of him, for coming with us --"   
  
"I didn't do it as a favor to you, or to anybody," McCoy says. He seems pissed off about something, and Hikaru wonders if he's having remorse about lying to Pike. McCoy is career Navy, but Hikaru never got the impression that he had problems going around authority figures to get things done.   
  
"Well, I'll still be grateful to you for the rest of my life," Hikaru says. Pavel hobbles over on his crutches, beaming at McCoy, who seems unfazed by his cheer.   
  
"Doctor," Pavel says. "Thank you for your help."   
  
"I probably should have given you stitches," McCoy says, pointing on the bandaged gash on Pavel's forehead. "You'll have a scar."   
  
"It makes no difference," Pavel says. "I've already got scars. What's another one?" He smiles, and McCoy just stares at him, looking at Pavel like there's something he still hasn't told him, a catch. Hikaru wonders if McCoy is drunk.   
  
"I keep having this dream that we didn't get there in time," McCoy says, and then he shakes it off, forcing a laugh. Hikaru never thought he'd see him embarrassed.   
  
"Well, anyway." McCoy slaps Pavel's shoulder, which makes Hikaru flinch, thinking of his ribs. "Jesus, kid, look at you. You'd better do something fucking amazing with your life, considering how hard you've had to hang on to it."   
  
"I -- will," Pavel says. He seems embarrassed himself, as if he doesn't know how to respond. McCoy shrugs and walks away, and Hikaru isn't sure about the others, but he's certain, then, that they'll never see McCoy again.   
  
"What was that all about?" Hikaru asks when he and Pavel are back in their room, Pavel stretched out on the futon and Hikaru undressing by the open courtyard door. "With McCoy?"   
  
"He's seen a lot of bad things," Pavel says. He's staring at the ceiling, his hands folded over his stomach. "Maybe he thinks I'm one of these bad things he's seen, the worst. That's how I feel when he looks at me, like he can see right into me, everything, and he can't bear it."   
  
"Well, I think he's just a crazy old drunk," Hikaru says, though he kind of understands what Pavel means. "I'm gonna sit in the bath for a few minutes -- you want to come with me? You could at least put your good leg in the water."   
  
"No, it's too cold out there," Pavel says. "You go, I'll just rest here."   
  
"I bet you're tired after hauling yourself around on those crutches." Hikaru kneels down to pull the blankets up to Pavel's chin, leaning in for a kiss as he does. Pavel smiles against his lips and snakes one arm out from beneath the blankets to slide his hand down over Hikaru's bare ass.   
  
"You've got cold spots," Pavel whispers.   
  
"Goosebumps," Hikaru says.   
  
"What?"   
  
"That's what we call them."   
  
"Goose, like the bird with the long neck?"   
  
"Yep."   
  
"That doesn't make any sense. At home we called them little ants."  
  
"Well, that makes perfect sense."   
  
"More than something about a goose."   
  
Hikaru kisses Pavel again before hurrying out to wash himself. The air has gotten cold, especially at night, and Hikaru knows what it will mean for the homeless people like the boy who helped him at the train station. Kenji. Hikaru still thinks about him, and his mother, and what she said. _How dare you ask anything of us?_ Hikaru had tried not to during his stay in Japan, he'd tried to keep himself closed off. He's not sure if it worked. He still feels as if this country is remote, another place where he doesn't belong, but he suspects that he'll feel different because of it when he returns to America, as if he's missing something he never quite had, though of course he'll have Pavel with him, and he doesn't need to belong to any country as long as he can belong to Pavel for the rest of his life.   
  
It's hard to pull himself from the heat of the bath, but he feels guilty enjoying it while Pavel can't, so he gets out and hurries for the room, his teeth chattering by the time he's dried off and flung himself under the blankets with Pavel, who is grinning at this display. Hikaru rolls against Pavel and clutches at him for warmth, shivering with happiness more than cold. There can't be anything better than this: blankets against bare skin, the cold shut out and the lantern flickering. Pavel kisses Hikaru's forehead and sighs, and Hikaru hopes he feels the same way. He'll always be afraid to know the depth of Pavel's thoughts, now that he knows his history. He wants, maybe stupidly, to think that he can be of some consolation after all that Pavel has survived, to imagine that Pavel will sometimes tell himself, _At least I have Hikaru now._   
  
"That was kind of cruel, what McCoy said to you, actually," Hikaru says. "Like you owe the world some incredible debt because of all the times you've barely made it out alive? What the hell did he have to say that for?"   
  
"I don't know," Pavel says. "I don't plan to be incredible. Or maybe you're misunderstanding him, maybe he was not saying that I owed anything to anyone but myself. He was saying I should fight to make myself happy, I think."   
  
"I can't believe we're leaving tomorrow. I'm glad, actually."   
  
Pavel says nothing for a moment, and Hikaru can tell that he's trying to decide whether or not he should speak. Hikaru waits, his head resting on Pavel's shoulder. He'll never again know if he really wants to hear everything Pavel might tell him. He's not sure he'll ever have the balls to learn Russian and find out what he wrote in that letter, the things that made Uhura cry.   
  
"I think I'm a little afraid to leave," Pavel says. "Things will be different when we go."   
  
"This won't be different," Hikaru says, sliding his arm across Pavel's chest to hold his other shoulder. He knows that Pavel is right, that it will be harder to be together in the real world, but after everything that's happened, he has to believe that they'll find a way.   
  
"Still," Pavel says. "Something is ending, yes?"   
  
"Yeah, sure. I guess I'll miss this crowd a little. You'll miss Jim, won't you?"   
  
Pavel grins. "You're jealous of him," he says.   
  
"I am not!"   
  
"It's okay. I like that you're jealous. Is that bad of me? But I wasn't talking about the friends we made here, I was talking about me and you, the beginning of us is ending. Does that make sense in English?"   
  
"Kind of," Hikaru says. "Yeah." He's been sad about this, too. All the sacred conversations he and Pavel had in the hot springs, learning each other's histories, and the futons where they learned each other's bodies: tomorrow it will all be gone.   
  
"That's okay," Pavel says. He reaches over to scratch his fingers down Hikaru's neck, which feels so good that his dick stirs; they haven't done anything more than lie together like this and kiss since Pavel returned to the inn. Or since Pavel told Hikaru about Berlin; he isn't sure which it is.   
  
"The next part will be better," Pavel says, but Hikaru doesn't buy his fake confidence. He pretends to, because it's their last night in Japan, and kisses Pavel's bruised collarbone. They lie in the dark and watch the last of the lantern oil burn out, both of them sleeping in short intervals, waking with nervous jerks of their shoulders and comforting each other when they do.   
  
Finally, Hikaru crawls out of bed and relights the lantern so he can read his watch. It's four in the morning; they're supposed to leave at five, and he really should have gotten up an hour ago to get ready. The room is freezing, and he dresses with shaking hands, dreaming of the hot springs. The sleep-sticky sadness of leaving a place that he never really wanted to see descends, and he feels heavy as he begins to gather their things, putting one of Pavel's shirts and a pair of his briefs that has been cleaned and folded by Mai into his own duffel secretly while Pavel sits up with a groan, pulling the blankets around his shoulders. _Just in case_ , Hikaru thinks, adding the notebook to his duffel before zipping it up.   
  
"It's so cold," Pavel says. Hikaru's chest is aching; he keeps catching himself thinking that he's going to have to leave Pavel behind here. He helps him dress, then pulls his Navy jacket around Pavel's shoulders, buttoning it up for him.   
  
"Am I allowed to wear this?" Pavel asks. He's smiling like Hikaru has just put a ring on his finger.   
  
"Yes," Hikaru says. He kisses Pavel's forehead and stands. "I'm going up to my room to make sure I didn't leave anything up there. Did you have anything in yours?"   
  
"No, Mai brought all my things down here. Hikaru," he whispers as Hikaru opens the door.   
  
"Yeah?"   
  
Pavel looks so small in Hikaru's jacket. He chews his lip.   
  
"Don't be long," Pavel whispers. Hikaru realizes then that Pavel hasn't been alone since they brought him back to the inn.   
  
"I won't," Hikaru says, feeling guilty for leaving, but he can't shake the feeling that he's left something important upstairs. He shuts the door of the suite behind him and heads down the dark hallway, gasping under his breath when he nearly crashes into Jim.   
  
"Hey," Jim says. "You guys ready to go?"   
  
"Not yet. I'm going upstairs to clear out the rest of my stuff -- go sit with him, okay?"   
  
Jim nods and hurries into the suite, and Hikaru is surprised with himself, because suddenly he doesn't feel jealous at all. Jim will keep Pavel safe until Hikaru returns. In the flat dark of early morning, the thought is actually comforting.   
  
Upstairs, the hallway is silent. Hikaru feels goosebumps rising over his arms, and maybe it is a bit like little ants marching across his skin. He feels like he's truly in the ghost world now, like the inn is a theater set with the lights turned down, the auditorium empty, the surreal world he's been living in for the past two months closed off to the living. He hurries to slip inside what was his room before he effectively moved down into the suite with Pavel, and shuts the door behind him. The moon is glowing eerily bright through the open windows inside the room, and he doesn't need to light a lantern to see that there's nothing here. Mai brought all of Hikaru's things down as well; why was he thinking she would have forgotten something? Then he sees the cranes lined up on the windowsill. Of course she wouldn't have brought those; what would they have done with them? Hikaru feels as if he and Pavel made the cranes a thousand years ago, in another life. He goes to the windowsill, carefully folds one of the sloppy cranes Pavel made and tucks it into his pocket.   
  
Turning to leave, he still feels as if he's forgotten something. He's not sure why he's so afraid to do so; if he leaves behind a pair of Navy-issue socks, so what? But he stands in the center of the room for awhile, trying to come up with it. He never danced with Pavel here the way he said he would, the way he wanted to, moving slow and rhythmless across the floor, Pavel's head on his shoulder, his eyes closed. Now it will be a long time before they can dance with each other, but as soon as that cast comes off, Hikaru will make it happen, even if it's in Pavel's tiny room at Berkeley with no music.   
  
He starts to leave again, but something in the room tugs at him, and he stops. His fists curl at his side in frustration. What does this place want with him? It's where he first kissed Pavel, stirring out of a rage to push all of his angry energy into Pavel's mouth. It's where he first touched him, and where Pavel held Hikaru's thumb, and where they first fell asleep together, warm and comfortable. They lived in a dream world, here in this room, while the rest of civilization seemed to be going to hell or going on without them. It will never be like it was here, no matter how much good they get away with in the future.   
  
Hikaru walks back to the windowsill and picks up another crane, one of the neat ones that he made. He gently presses it flat and tucks it into his pocket with Pavel's crane, then walks quickly from the room, before it can pull him back again. He doesn't let himself think about what he's leaving behind as he walks back down to the suite, blind in the dark of the hallway. He pushes the door open and finds Jim helping Pavel up from the futon, handing him his crutches.   
  
"Ready now?" Jim asks. He's got Hikaru's duffel slung over his shoulder and Pavel's bag in his free hand. Hikaru walks forward to take them both, then feels guilty for not taking Pavel instead, but Jim has him standing steady.   
  
"Yep," Hikaru says. "Ready."   
  
They don't speak on the way out to the Jeep, and not when they pull out of the driveway, tires crunching over pebbles. Pavel is stretched out in the back with his leg resting across the seat, and Hikaru is up front with Jim. The Jeep's lights seem intrusive and strange as they pass over the sleeping town, and Hikaru's heart is racing; he's afraid that someone or something will rush out into the middle of the road and try to stop them from leaving.   
  
"You'll be here another month?" Hikaru says to Jim, though he knows the answer already. Suddenly it seems that small talk is called for, to cut through the stillness. Pavel is silent in the backseat, dozing.   
  
"Yeah, one more month." Jim looks tired, and ten years older than he did at the start of this mission.   
  
"What'll you do after that?"   
  
"Probably reenlist," Jim says. "But maybe I'll get married first, or something."   
  
"Or something? Got anybody in mind?"   
  
"Nah. Mai turned me down." Jim glances over at Hikaru and smirks. "She knew I didn't mean it."   
  
Hikaru isn't sure what to make of that, so he stops talking. At some point he falls asleep with his forehead pressed against the passenger side window, and he dreams that they arrive at the airport only to find that it's been demolished. He wakes up to the sound of Pavel and Jim laughing.   
  
"I never was much of an ice skater," Jim says, and Hikaru shuts his eyes again.   
  
When they do make it to the airport, it's intact, the sun rising behind the air traffic control towers. It's been completely taken over by the military, like everything else, and after they sign in at the checkpoint they're directed toward their tarmac. Pavel is yawning, and Hikaru's stomach is growling, but he's too nervous to imagine eating, as if he's going to have to fly the plane to America himself.   
  
"Seems strange that you're not coming with us," Hikaru says to Jim when they park on the tarmac.   
  
"I'll be back home soon enough," Jim says. He's smiling strangely, genuine but sad, like a man who's made peace with his death sentence. "Pavel said I should come visit."   
  
"Yes, you must," Pavel says. "I can show you the university, and Hikaru can show you the city."   
  
"Oh, I've seen San Francisco," Jim says with a snort. "But yeah, sure. I'll come, you can count on it."   
  
Jim and Hikaru climb out, and they both help Pavel out and onto his crutches. The co-pilot comes over to shake their hands, and he and Jim chit-chat for awhile about the occupation and their eagerness to get back home, though Hikaru gets the impression that Jim is bullshitting about wanting to leave. Pavel is swaying on his feet by the time the co-pilot hears from the pilot that all of the other passengers are loaded and they can bring the civilian and the translator on board.   
  
"So this is it," Jim says as the co-pilot jogs off to prepare for takeoff.   
  
"Until you come to San Francisco," Pavel says. Jim tugs on Pavel's ear like Pavel is a kid who's asked him to autograph a baseball.   
  
"You'll be good as new by then," Jim says. "Running marathons."   
  
"Yes," Pavel says, and Hikaru isn't sure if his eyes are bleary from sleeping in the car or because he's close to crying. A medic comes over with a wheelchair; he makes Pavel sit in it despite Pavel's hesitation, and wheels him toward the plane. Pavel looks over his shoulder at Hikaru with trepidation when he doesn't immediately follow.   
  
"Poor guy," Jim says.   
  
"Yeah." Hikaru clears his throat. "Listen."   
  
"Hikaru --"   
  
"You saved me, too," Hikaru says before he can lose his nerve. It helps that the plane has started up and the whole tarmac is blasted with noise, though this means Hikaru practically had to shout the words he's been meaning to say to Jim for two weeks now. Jim smiles and flinches as if he's going to reach for Hikaru, but then he just shoves his hands into his pockets.   
  
"I know," he says.   
  
"I don't know what the real world is anymore," Hikaru says, watching the medics load Pavel onto the plane. "I'm afraid -- we won't get there, like we'll turn to dust or something."   
  
"Hey." Jim grins, full-fledged now, all the sadness drained away. "Why do you think I'm gonna reenlist?"   
  
"I'm not going to."   
  
"You'd better not." Jim flicks his head toward the plane. "Go on," he says. "Take care of him."   
  
"I will."   
  
"I know you will."   
  
Hikaru jogs toward the plane, the medics holding the door for him. When he's halfway up the stairs he looks back at Jim, who is standing on the tarmac and watching the plane, his hands in his pockets, his collar turned up against the cold. Hikaru waves, and when Jim waves back, Hikaru isn't afraid that he and Pavel will turn to dust anymore. They've already crossed one of those invisible barriers. He can see it now, from where he's standing, because Jim is on the other side, almost opaque in the distance.   
  
He finds his way to his seat, where Pavel is waiting for him, his searching eyes filling with light when he sees Hikaru heading down the aisle. Hikaru sits beside him and buckles himself in. The seats across from them are empty, Pavel's leg stretched out in the extra space.   
  
"Poor Jim," Pavel says.   
  
"He said the same about you. You two underestimate each other."   
  
Pavel smiles. The plane takes off, and Hikaru watches the window as the country disappears too quickly. He looks at Pavel while they're still pointed up at the sky in a forty-five degree angle, and grins at the name over the pocket on the jacket he's wearing. _Sulu_.   
  
"So tell me," Hikaru says. "What the hell impressed you so much, when I fell asleep on the plane?"   
  
"Oh." Pavel looks out the window, smiling at the gaudy pink of the sunrise. "Nothing, really." He leans over to whisper: "If I'm honest, Hikaru, I just thought you were handsome."   
  
The plane ride is long and quiet. A couple of guys who saunter by on the way to the restroom stop to ask Pavel what the hell happened to him. Pavel gives them the story about the bandits, and Hikaru can see that he enjoys telling it, make-believe misfortune. When Pavel tells them that he was in Japan studying the effects of the bomb they congratulate him as if he's just said that he invented it himself. Hikaru and Pavel don't talk about what will happen when they get off the plane. It seems like it would bring bad luck. Hikaru's family doesn't even know that he's returning; they're not expecting him home for another month.   
  
This time, they both fall asleep, and wake up to static over the intercom, the pilot announcing their descent into San Francisco. Hikaru glances at Pavel, who is yawning hugely and rubbing his eyes. He looks out the window and sees the shape of the land in the distance. Everything feels different already. He pushes his elbow against Pavel's on the armrest.   
  
"It's like I've never been here," Pavel says quietly.   
  
"Yeah," Hikaru says, though he doesn't feel that way at all. He feels suddenly like he never left. It's mid-afternoon in San Francisco, and the sun is buttery gold across the wing of the plane. Hikaru wants to take Pavel's hand as his ears begin to pop, and he has to settle for pressing his elbow more firmly against Pavel's.   
  
"Dr. McCoy gave me the name of a doctor I should see at the hospital," Pavel says. "They're going to remove the cast and do an X-ray, put another cast on."   
  
"I'll come with you," Hikaru says, still looking out the window. He keeps swallowing, but his ears won't adjust to the pressure changes as the plane sinks closer and closer to land.   
  
"No, no," Pavel says. "You should go and see your family. They won't let you in the X-ray room, anyway."   
  
Hikaru knows that's true. He and Pavel aren't family, not really, not here.   
  
The plane lands at the Naval base, and everyone but Hikaru and Pavel seems to have someone there waiting. Young wives and weepy parents, squealing babies. Half the men on board were POWs who were rescued and rehabilitated after the surrender. Hikaru didn't really let that sink in while they were on the plane, but it's hard to miss as they're reunited with their families, everybody grasping at each other like they're afraid a wind will come and blow them apart again.   
  
Pavel and Hikaru share a taxi into town. Hikaru has to sit up front on account of Pavel's leg. The driver makes small talk and only Pavel answers, though he sounds so tired, his fake laughter strained. Hikaru feels only half-conscious; the sun is too bright.   
  
They reach the hospital before Hikaru's parents' neighborhood, and Hikaru helps Pavel out, shooing the taxi driver away. He walks Pavel inside, carrying his bag, and finds a nurse who gets him a wheelchair. There's no time for a proper goodbye; she wheels him toward admitting and Hikaru has no reason to follow.   
  
"Look me up at Berkeley," Pavel shouts over his shoulder as the nurse is taking him away. Hikaru's heart is pounding, his hands shaking. "You know my last name, don't you?" Pavel shouts. He looks terrified. "And how to spell it?"   
  
"Yeah," Hikaru says. The question seems ridiculous, but as he turns to go he realizes that he has no idea how to spell Pavel's last name. He looks back as he's standing at the hospital's front doors and watches the nurse wheeling Pavel away. Suddenly it seems insane that she is; how will Pavel pay? Does he have money? Certainly none on him, not American money. Should Hikaru contact someone at Berkeley? The nurse and Pavel round a corner, and Hikaru stands staring after them until someone tells him to get out of the way.   
  
The taxi arrives at Hikaru's parents' house around four in the afternoon. It's much smaller than the house they had before the internment, but the neighborhood is better, farther from the center of the city. Hikaru stands on the sidewalk with his duffel for awhile after the driver is gone, staring up at the house. It's so quiet and anonymous; anyone could live here. It isn't possessed with any sort of energy, not like the old house with the funeral parlor downstairs. Hikaru prefers this one, which doesn't ask for or offer anything.   
  
"Hello?" he calls when he pushes through the back door into the kitchen. It's unlocked, but the house seems empty, until he calls out again and hears footsteps on the second floor. By the time they've moved to the stairs he knows that it's his mother. No one else in the house walks the way that she does, soft but quick with worry. She comes into the kitchen with a frown, holding a dustpan in one hand and a can of hairspray in the other.   
  
"Were you going to assault me with one of those if I turned out to be an intruder?" Hikaru asks. He's still holding his duffel, not sure where to put it. It feels now like he dreamed the weeks he was home before he left for Japan, like he hasn't seen his mother since he enlisted.   
  
"What are you doing here?" his mother asks, answering his English with Japanese, which she always does when she's irritated with him.   
  
"Mission ended early."   
  
"Hmm." She knows he's lying. She sets the dust pan and hairspray on the kitchen counter and smoothes down the front of her dress. Hikaru lets his duffel drop to the floor.   
  
"Where is everybody?" Hikaru asks.   
  
"Your father's seeing that rich Chinese man about a loan. Huang, do you know him? I don't like it, but how else can we rebuild our business? And your sisters are at school, of course. Sit down, Hikaru, what are you doing?"   
  
He sits, feeling both like an unwanted stranger and an honored guest. For some reason, he's never been happier to be in the company of his mother, probably because of this treatment. She's already boiling water for tea.   
  
"Meiko's in school?" Hikaru says. "What for? Don't tell me she's going to college."   
  
"Of course not, where would we get the money for that? And anyway, your sister hasn't got the brains. She's taking secretarial classes in the city."   
  
"Really? I'm surprised they accepted her."   
  
"Why, because she's Japanese? I'm surprised, too, and we'll just see if anyone actually hires her. None of the Japanese around here can afford secretarial help from a non-relation, and of course your father wouldn't allow her to work for a Chinese man, not that they could afford it, either. Though, what do I know about them, maybe they can. Meiko doesn't listen to us, anyway, neither of you two ever did."   
  
"That's not true."   
  
"Are you hungry? I was just about to start dinner anyway. Your father will be so happy to see you. You know he hates being in the house with just the four of us women, and anyway he needs help restarting the business. So much to do -- it will be a relief for me, actually, I've missed work, at least it's something to occupy myself with. Socializing isn't what it used to be, of course, who wants to have guests when you can barely afford to feed your family?"   
  
Hikaru has never heard his mother talk this much, except when his youngest sister had TB and almost died. He wants to tell her that she can calm down, that he hasn't come to her door as a ghost, though he does feel as if he has, and she won't look at him directly, as if he's a person from _Yomi_ who will turn her hair white if she stops to stare.   
  
"Aren't you going to ask me how it was?" he asks when she sets down tea and _dorayaki_ for him.   
  
"How what was? Japan?" She scoffs. "I know what things are like over there without having to ask you."   
  
"Well, you could ask about my experience of it."   
  
"You could tell me. You don't have to wait for me to ask."   
  
Hikaru drinks his tea and eats three _dorayaki_. His mother sets down three more, and he eats those, too. Then, finally, she sits, and they look at each other. In an instant she seems to know that he killed someone, but maybe he's only expecting her to.   
  
"I met a girl there who wanted to marry me," he says.   
  
"A Japanese girl?"   
  
"Of course."   
  
"I'm sure you said no."   
  
"She wasn't serious, anyway." Hikaru doesn't know why he's talking about this. He always brings up the worst possible subjects when he's confronted with the full attention of his mother.   
  
"You'd be surprised," his mother says. "You're a good looking man."   
  
"Did you get my letter?"   
  
His mother sits back and studies him, as if she's trying to decide if he can handle her response.   
  
"Yes," she finally says. "I'm glad you made friends."   
  
"Are you really?"   
  
She gets up from her chair and sits in the one beside Hikaru's. He blushes when she takes his hand between both of hers, embarrassed for trying to provoke her. Sometimes she seems so young to him, as if she can't possibly be his mother, as if she's just a girl from school who never liked him.   
  
"You look different," she says.   
  
"I am different."   
  
"I was afraid you would be, but maybe you needed a change. You aren't going back there, are you?"   
  
"No, Ma. I'll stay here. I'll help Dad."   
  
"Good boy," she says, leaning to kiss him between his eyebrows. "We missed you so much. I have to admit, I was afraid you would meet a girl there and never come home."   
  
"You were not," Hikaru says, laughing.   
  
"I was! I thought, Hikaru will find someone who needs saving and get himself in trouble. Come upstairs, I'll run you a bath, and when you're finished your sisters will be home and I'll have some _onigiri_ for you. I was going to make prawns for dinner, but maybe I'll send Meiko to the market for a duck, I know you like that."   
  
"Prawns are fine, Ma."   
  
She shushes him and pulls him upstairs. He puts his things away while she fills the bathtub, and goes into the bathroom to undress when he hears her shuffling back downstairs. It's strange, lowering himself into the confining white tub after so many baths in the hot spring. There's a little window up by the ceiling, and it's being hit directly by the sun, glowing so bright that it leaves a shifting square of light across the black when he shuts his eyes.   
  
He thinks of Pavel in the hospital, sitting behind an X-ray machine, some doctor looking into him and thinking he can see it all. Pavel was right, it was McCoy who saw into him like he was made of glass. Nobody here can help him like the people in Japan did. Hikaru alone will be an inadequate support system. He sighs and sinks down so that his shoulders are underwater, his knees rising up. He's cold, tired and disoriented, and ready to sleep in his own bed. He stares up at the square of light again and listens to the sound of his mother bustling around in the kitchen downstairs, making rice balls. He imagines his sisters coming home from school and his mother telling them with excitement that _oniisan_ is home. And when Meiko arrives, the way she'll roll her eyes about the request to buy a duck and complain that Hikaru is the favorite twin. But she'll ride her bike down to the market anyway, grinning, glad for the opportunity to have someone who will take her jabs to heart and engage her in the bickering she loves. He thinks of the way his father will hug him with relief and then pretend not to be surprised when Hikaru offers to help him with the family business, giving up his childish fight against his inherited fate. His father didn't want to be an undertaker, either. He did what he had to do for his family. Hikaru can't wait to smoke and drink with him in the sitting room after dinner, the two of them talking gravely about the occupation in Japan, as if either of them really knows anything about it.   
  
Meanwhile, what will Pavel go home to? An empty room at Berkeley? Or will they keep him overnight at the hospital, coughing old men shuffling down the hallway, nurses helping him piss into a pan? Hikaru had done it lovingly, with a strange sort of pride.   
  
He gets out of the bath and goes into his room to dress, his old clothes feeling unfamiliar. When he's dressed he goes downstairs in his father's study and he digs out a phone book. He calls Berkeley, asking for the physics department. A secretary tells him that Mr. Chekov is in Japan and won't be back until the end of the month.   
  
For a moment, Hikaru is terrified that it's true. What if he brought back the ghost and left the real Pavel stranded somewhere? He hangs up the phone and puts his hands over his face. A few minutes later, his sisters are bounding through the door, throwing their arms around him and asking him if it was horrible, if he saw dead people lying in the street.   
  
_No_ , he wants to tell them, _they were walking around, they spoke to me, they held my hand and slept in my arms. I fell in love with a dead person. That's how bad it is over there_.   
  
*   
  
The next morning, Hikaru is hungover from drinking with his father and from too much food, but he still wakes up early and dresses quickly. He told his parents that he's still got to serve at a Navy recruitment center for two months before his service is finished. He fully intends to help them get their business back on its feet, but he needs time to himself before then. He doesn't want to tie up the car, so he takes a taxi to Berkeley.   
  
It's not hard to find Pavel's room on campus, which worries him. He tries to believe what he told Pavel, that the Russians -- _the_ Russians, as if Pavel is something else now, but of course he is -- won't try to take him again, not while he's in America. Still, his heart is pounding when he knocks on Pavel's door at the graduate housing building. He's so certain that no one will answer that he's startled when he hears the sounds of Pavel struggling to his feet and toward the door.   
  
"Hikaru," he says when he finally gets the door open, beaming. Pavel looks ashen and small as he leans on his crutches, and Hikaru swallows down an exhalation of protest and appreciation at the sight of him.   
  
"Are you alright? Did you sleep?" Hikaru has his hands on Pavel's face before he's even walked into the room, and Pavel laughs, backing up so that he can come inside.   
  
"I slept a little," Pavel says as Hikaru shuts the door. He hurries to help Pavel take a seat on the bed. The room is small and sparse, just as Hikaru pictured it. There is nothing on the cinder block walls, and there aren't even many books, just a few big ones stacked on a desk that seems to be screwed into the wall. The blinds are coated with dust.   
  
"I know it's not very much," Pavel says. "But they are good to me here. They paid my medical bills -- look, a new cast! Though I think the one you and Dr. McCoy made was just fine. This one only comes to my knee, though, see, so I can move a bit more."   
  
"That's good." Hikaru can barely breathe. He wants to stuff Pavel into his pocket and run away from this place, where even the sunlight through the window seems stale. They stare at each other for a few seconds, then smile nervously.   
  
"How is your family?" Pavel asks.   
  
"They're good. Trying to start up a new funeral parlor. It'll be rough at first. I'm gonna help them."   
  
"Good, Hikaru." Pavel smiles. He scratches the back of his neck, opens his mouth and then shuts it again. "I had been hoping you might come to school here." He shakes his head and laughs, like this was foolish of him.   
  
"Pavel, I don't even think I could get in."   
  
"Hikaru -- I." Pavel looks at him pleadingly, his eyes suddenly shining with tears. "Why haven't you kissed me?"   
  
"Oh, Pavel, Jesus --" Hikaru is afraid to break Pavel, afraid to squeeze his tender ribs, but he doesn't bother to explain this, just crushes his mouth against Pavel's and swallows down Pavel's moan.   
  
"It's so hard to sleep without you," Pavel whispers against Hikaru's lips. Hikaru holds him as firmly as he can without feeling as if he's going to snap Pavel in two. He's so light in Hikaru's grip, and his skin is almost greenish.   
  
"You need sunlight," Hikaru says, tracing his fingers over Pavel's pale cheeks, which still have yellowing bruises splotched across them.   
  
"I need you," Pavel says, as if Hikaru is a comparable substitute.   
  
"Yeah, and a few cheeseburgers."   
  
Pavel grins. "Okay, yes."   
  
They walk across campus, Pavel panting on his crutches and Hikaru insisting that he rest every ten minutes or so. Sitting on benches, they watch students walk by in clumps and comment on their clothes, their hair cuts, and the stupidly self-conscious way they smoke their cigarettes. By the time they finally make it to an A&W, Pavel is sweating, and Hikaru wishes he could carry him back to his room. They eat at a table on the restaurant's patio, two cheeseburgers each.   
  
"What do you think of the root beer?" Hikaru asks as Pavel sucks it down through a straw.   
  
"I can't think of the right word in English," Pavel says, making a face. "Something like -- dirt?"   
  
"I don't think dirt's the right word."   
  
"Like a fungus, then? A mushroom? Something that rots?"   
  
"Alright, alright."   
  
They take their time walking back, stopping often so that Pavel can rest. Despite his exhaustion, he looks a little healthier already, his cheeks glowing pink with exertion and his smile quick and easy. Hikaru never wants to leave him again; he wants to bring him home for the afternoon rice balls and pull him into the lonely twin bed where he slept last night.   
  
"How are you finding America the second time around?" Hikaru asks.   
  
"I think everyone forgot the war already," Pavel says. "Not at the university, of course, but at the hospital, and that place with the cheeseburgers. It seems like none of it matters, already." He smiles. "It's nice."   
  
"You really want people to forget the way people like you suffered?"   
  
"People like me? What do you mean, Jews? I don't know, maybe I don't want them to forget. But I don't want to live with them while they're remembering. Or in a place where they have to remember. Do you see?"   
  
"I guess," Hikaru says. Just walking across Berkeley's campus is making him feel stupid, and Pavel's semi-translated philosophizing isn't helping. They get back to Pavel's building and Hikaru is really struggling not to carry him into the room as he breathlessly pushes open the door. Pavel leans his crutches against the wall by his bed and hobbles toward it, falling onto his pillows with a great huff of his breath.   
  
"Be careful with your leg," Hikaru says, helping him hoist it onto the bed.   
  
"I wish you could be my nurse," Pavel says, looking down at Hikaru from under heavy eyelids. "They've hired one for me, you know."   
  
"I could be," Hikaru says. "I mean it. I told my parents I have to serve at the recruitment office for two more months. I could come here every day and help you."   
  
Pavel laughs and holds his arms out. Hikaru lowers himself onto Pavel very carefully, avoiding his chest, though that's where he most wants to dump his full weight and sink down to nothing.   
  
"Do you mean it?" Pavel asks, stroking Hikaru's hair. "You'll come here and hold my dick for me while I piss? You don't have to."   
  
"But I want to. Just yesterday I was just getting wistful about helping you piss."   
  
"What does this mean, wistful?"   
  
"Like, I missed it."   
  
"Now you're lying. Or you're very disturbed."   
  
"Call me disturbed if you want, but I'll take whatever contact I can get with your cock nowadays."   
  
Hikaru goes still after he's said so, pinching his eyes shut with guilt. He'd promised himself he wouldn't rush Pavel back into sex, even if it took the rest of their lives, but he needs it more than he thought his body could ever need anything.   
  
"If only I didn't have this cast," Pavel says.   
  
"Yeah." Hikaru wants tell Pavel that they could work around the cast, that it wouldn't be hard at all, but he knows that's not the reason they haven't had sex since Pavel sustained his injuries. He lies still, breathing onto the collar of Pavel's shirt, not sure what to do. He feels untethered in this world of concrete things, in danger of slipping loose and disappearing.   
  
They're both lulled to sleep by the quiet buzz of the room, the floating dust and the thick sunlight that falls across them in bars through the blinds. Hikaru wakes up dreamless and dry, and Pavel is already awake, his eyelids heavy as he stares at the empty wall across from the bed.   
  
"Sorry," Hikaru says. He sits up, not sure what he's apologizing for. "Have you got work to do?"   
  
"I should start writing my report for the Survey."   
  
Hikaru leans against the wall and stares down at Pavel. Something about him is different. When Hikaru realizes what it is he almost starts to cry.   
  
"Your hair is short again."   
  
Pavel turns to look at him. He smiles strangely. Hikaru suddenly feels like he knows nothing about Pavel at all. He hates that this is partly a comfort, as if it releases him from some obligation.   
  
"I had the nurse do it at the hospital," Pavel says. "I was wondering when you would notice."   
  
Hikaru walks to the bus stop as the fog begins to roll in. As he rides home, he stares out the window and watches people on the street, feeling as if he's looking for someone. When he reaches his neighborhood he realizes that he hasn't been looking for someone but for something. He's been waiting to find a corner he could turn that would take him back to Yamaguchi.   
  
The next morning, he takes the bus back to Berkeley and begins his service as Pavel's nurse. He bathes him and helps him dress, and on the first few days he kisses between Pavel's shoulder blades and licks up the back of his neck, Pavel's sighs making Hikaru half-hard. Eventually these actions seem inappropriate, or as if they're only embarrassing Pavel, so Hikaru takes on a more businesslike demeanor. Pavel, too, grows more serious. He spends hours at his desk, glaring down at his notes while Hikaru dozes on the bed, watching him.   
  
When Pavel has meetings to attend with the physics department, Hikaru wanders the campus. He sneaks into the back of classrooms, rarely inconspicuous; he hasn't seen any other Asian students taking summer classes, though Pavel claims there are some Chinese graduate students in the physics department. Hikaru doesn't intrude on physics classes; he prefers the anatomy and plant biology classes, and particularly the plant biology, which is taught by a Japanese man who reminds Hikaru of the old innkeeper in Yamaguchi. He's serious but spirited, humorless one moment and openly sentimental about orchid reproduction the next.   
  
"Don't think I haven't noticed you," he says to Hikaru one day as Hikaru is attempting to sneak out quietly with the actual students. He stops, ashamed of himself for trying to steal an education. He's even started taking notes in the notebook from Japan, though mostly he just draws flowers in the margins.   
  
"I work on campus, I take care of a man in the physics department," Hikaru explains. "He's injured, I'm his nurse. He has things to do during the day, so I try to keep myself occupied. I'm sorry to intrude." He blushes ferociously when he realizes that he's speaking in Japanese, though the professor spoke to him in English.   
  
"Don't apologize," the professor says, still speaking English. His pronunciation is accented but careful. "Shin Saito," he says, holding out his hand. Hikaru grins and shakes it.   
  
"Hikaru Sulu."   
  
"So you're not Japanese?"   
  
"I am -- they screwed up our name when we emigrated."   
  
"Ah." Mr. Saito smiles slowly, as if he's trying to decide how to deal with Hikaru. "You're interested in botany, then?"   
  
"I guess. I mean, I'm not an academic. I just like flowers."   
  
He's never felt like more of an idiot. Mr. Saito nods as if Hikaru has just said something very serious and worthy of consideration.   
  
"You're welcome to sit in on the lectures," Mr. Saito says, picking up his case. "I have to say," he adds in Japanese. "You don't look like a nurse."   
  
When Pavel gets out of his meeting that afternoon, Hikaru tells him about his encounter with the botany professor on the way back to Pavel's room. Pavel grins at Hikaru as if he's impressed.   
  
"You should enroll," he says. "There's a Russian class you could take. And a Russian literature class, too. I wish I had time to take classes."   
  
"What do they have you working on now?" Hikaru asks. Pavel shrugs like he doesn't want to talk about it.   
  
"The sun's already going down," he says glumly. Hikaru always leaves at six o'clock to make it home for dinner. He's invited Pavel, but Pavel just laughs whenever he does.   
  
"Summer will be over soon," Hikaru says. "The days are getting shorter."   
  
"Yes." Pavel sounds so grave that Hikaru feels like he heard Hikaru say something else entirely. They get back to his room and Pavel stretches out on the bed with a sigh. Hikaru can tell by his wincing that his back is killing him, or maybe it's his ribs. He gives him some aspirin and watches him drink the pills down with a glass of water.   
  
"Let me show you something before you go," Pavel says breathlessly, wiping his mouth. "You see that little red box on the bookshelf? Will you get it down for me?"   
  
Hikaru does as he asked. The box is coated with dust, like everything else in the room. When he washes Pavel in the mornings he almost expects the cloth he uses to come away gray with dust. He hands the box to Pavel, who opens it carefully, with two hands. Inside there are various delicate little artifacts -- a little felt horse with beads for eyes, a bracelet with green stones, and some photographs.   
  
"My uncle sent this after I first arrived at Berkeley," Pavel says. "He lives in New York, my mother's brother. He said these were her things when she was a girl. I don't know if it's true or if he was only trying to comfort me. They might be my cousin's toys for all I know. But there's this."   
  
He lifts a picture from the box. In it there is a little girl with her hair wrapped in a braid around her head like a crown, smiling widely, showing her small teeth.   
  
"My mother," Pavel says. "She was about seven years old, I think."   
  
He takes the picture back and shows Hikaru the others, mostly photos of his uncle's family. There's one of three little boys in swim trunks, and the one in the center must be Pavel. He looks uncomfortable and nervous, as if he wants someone to pick him up and carry him away from the edge of the lake they're posing beside.   
  
"That's me," Pavel says with a grin, pointing to the boy in the center. "Probably five years old. Don't you like my ears?"   
  
Hikaru looks up from the picture, almost expecting to see Pavel in black and white. He's got freckles; how has Hikaru managed to forget that? He sets the picture back in the box with the others and takes hold of Pavel's face with both hands, kissing him softly. Pavel answers with a whine and scoots closer, hissing at a wrong turn of his leg or his ribs but never stopping, kissing Hikaru with desperation, his mouth so wet.   
  
"God," Hikaru says, trembling. He presses his face against Pavel's. "I love you. I miss you."   
  
"I'm here," Pavel says meekly. He takes hold of Hikaru's wrists. "Stay. I can't sleep alone. I just lie here and cry, thinking you'll come back in the middle of the night, but you never do."   
  
"Pavel, I'm sorry, listen, I'll rent an apartment near here once I get some money, you can move in with me --"   
  
Pavel says something in Russian, shaking his head, and somehow Hikaru knows that it was _Fuck that_. He kisses Hikaru hard, and Hikaru thinks he's probably tired of people's promises about the future. For Pavel there must be nothing but every passing second, every long day alone.   
  
"I need you," Pavel says. "You could lean me up against the wall, turn me on my side, I don't care if my leg snaps in half." He puts his hand over the tightening bulge in Hikaru's pants and whispers something in Russian that must be _fuck me, fuck me_ and then the word for _please_ , which Hikaru has learned by now.   
  
Hikaru nods and kisses Pavel's neck, ripping his shirt off when he groans. The pants come off more slowly, and Hikaru leans up to mouth at Pavel's erection while he pulls them down. He's not sure why they haven't done this; he thought it was Pavel, but maybe it was him, too. They were waiting for something, or afraid of something. Maybe they were afraid that this wouldn't make everything okay, that it wouldn't solve anything, but with Pavel's tongue sliding between his lips, Hikaru feels like it will.   
  
Hikaru arranges Pavel carefully on his side, his bad leg resting on top of his good one. Pavel is wincing but still encouraging Hikaru to continue, reaching back to paw at him frantically. Hikaru uses the ointment Pavel has been rubbing on his cuts to slick himself, and when he finally pushes in they both moan loud enough to shake the dust from the blinds. For a long time Hikaru just lies still inside Pavel, biting at the pale slope of his shoulder as their heartbeats pound together, the rhythm lulling them into a kind of trance. Pavel sighs and squirms on Hikaru impatiently, moaning as Hikaru licks over the red marks he leaves on Pavel's skin with just the tip of his tongue.   
  
"Don't leave me," Pavel cries when Hikaru begins to fuck him, holding him too tight across the chest but unable to let him go.   
  
"Please, please," Pavel continues, unable to stop talking, while Hikaru can't seem to get a single word past his lips. "Please, Hikaru, _ahhhh_ , please be the one who doesn't go."   
  
Pavel is a mess when they're finished, sobbing into Hikaru's chest. Hikaru just pets him, whispering that he'll never leave and knowing that Pavel won't let himself believe it until Hikaru makes it true, that it will take a whole lifetime of never parting to reassure him. When the sun drops low enough outside to make the room glow as if the world outside is burning, Pavel finally lifts his head and gives Hikaru a shaky smile.   
  
"You don't have to stay," he says softly. He kisses the corner of Hikaru's mouth as if to apologize for his behavior.   
  
"Yes, I do," Hikaru says.   
  
He dresses and goes downstairs to use the phone in the lobby to call his parents, telling his father that he won't be home for dinner, he's met an old Navy friend and they're going to be out late, catching up. His father seems suspicious, but Hikaru is an adult and his father can't refuse to allow him to stay out. Hikaru isn't sure what he'll do the next night, or the night after that, but it's this one that matters now.   
  
When he gets back to Pavel's room, Pavel is still lying on his side, hugging the pillow. He smiles up at Hikaru as he undresses.  
  
"I planned out our whole life together," Hikaru says. "Back in Japan. Do you want to hear it?"   
  
"No, no, don't tell me anything about what will happen. If you tell me it won't come true."   
  
"Well." Hikaru gets into bed and Pavel squeezes up close to him, pinching his eyes shut and smiling hard, as if he can hardly stand how happy he is.   
  
"It'll be a surprise, then," Hikaru says. "Just know that I've got it all worked out."   
  
"Don't say that, either."   
  
"Geez, Pavel. What am I allowed to say, then?"   
  
Pavel lifts his head to look up at Hikaru. The sun has gone down, and the building is so quiet that Hikaru wonders if something happened out there to shut everybody up. They'll never be able to think that the world isn't maybe seconds away from ending, a great disappearing wind already moving out from ground zero in every direction, coming to sweep them away with the rest of the landscape.   
  
"You're allowed to say what will happen tonight," Pavel says. "Only tonight."   
  
"Okay." Hikaru reaches down to stroke Pavel's side. "Tonight, well." He leans down to whisper in Pavel's ear, "Tonight I'm gonna fuck you over and over, and you're gonna keep begging me for more."   
  
Pavel moans, licking Hikaru under his chin, which feels surprisingly, insanely good, but so does everything Pavel does to him.   
  
"Then what?" Pavel asks, grinning.   
  
"Then, then, when you're all stretched out and dripping, I'm gonna fall asleep inside you, and in the morning I'll wash my come off of you, I'll rub you clean until you're hard and begging, then I'll fill you up again."   
  
He realizes as Pavel moans and sighs, writhing in Hikaru's arms as Hikaru strokes his cock, that he broke the rules and talked about the next day, as if he's sure that the sun will rise in the morning. No one can promise that anymore, but Pavel doesn't protest, just kisses Hikaru, pressing himself as close as he can with the cast holding him back.   
  
"I lied before," Pavel gasps out, arching into Hikaru's touch. "On the plane, I didn't want to say so with all of those strangers around us, but I didn't just think you were handsome when I saw you sleeping. _Ohhh_ , Hikaru." Pavel twitches in Hikaru's grip, whimpering in frustration at his limited mobility.   
  
"What, then?" Hikaru asks, holding Pavel's throbbing cock. He keeps his hand still so that Pavel can finish. "What was it really?"   
  
"I thought," Pavel pants, fighting his eyes open. "I thought you looked like the loneliest person I'd ever seen in my life."   
  
"Yeah? Well, I was."   
  
"And I wanted, so much, even that first night in the bath, I wanted you to _have me_ , Hikaru. Me, I wanted to be the only solution." He laughs at the word.   
  
"You are," Hikaru whispers. He turns Pavel gently onto his stomach and rubs his hands over his back, watching Pavel's shoulder blades rise and fall like clipped wings with his ragged breath. In the light through the window from a campus street lamp, he traces over the scars, old and new. He glances at Pavel's desk, where the old-fashioned calligraphy pen he uses to make his notes is standing up in its ink pot.   
  
"Hang on a second," Hikaru says, climbing out of bed to fetch it.   
  
"Hmm?" Pavel lifts his head from his pillow. He looks sleepy already.   
  
"Your leg isn't hurting, is it?" Hikaru asks, returning to bed with the pen and ink.   
  
"My leg is fine. What are you doing? You're going to draw on my cast?"   
  
"No." Hikaru lies on his side, propped up on one elbow, and dips the pen in the ink before bring it to rest at the center of Pavel's back. Pavel gasps.   
  
"Hikaru!"   
  
"It will wash off in the morning. Remember when we wrote in the notebook?"   
  
"Yes." Pavel grins and rests his head against his pillow again, his shoulders sinking down comfortably. "What are you writing?" he asks, shivering as Hikaru moves the pen softly over his back.   
  
"My name," Hikaru says. "You can write yours on me after this dries."   
  
"It tickles!" Pavel bounces with laughter against the mattress. "Now what are you writing?" he asks when Hikaru moves the pen up to write between Pavel's shoulder blades.   
  
"Protective characters," Hikaru says. "Charms." He writes the characters for strength and good fortune, then the one for happiness underneath them, inventing spells to keep Pavel safe. He blows on them to help them dry, and Pavel breathes out a contented sigh, as if Hikaru's spell has already sunk into his skin.   
  
When it's Pavel's turn he has to hold Hikaru's shoulders down to keep him still. He can't stop laughing as Pavel writes on him, first his full name, which barely fits across the widest part of Hikaru's back, and then his favorite equations; Hikaru can feel the little numbers, fractions and subscripts.   
  
"What do they mean?" Hikaru asks. "The equations?"   
  
"They mean that the world is beautiful and perfect no matter what people do in it," Pavel says. "You should wear them because you're further proof."   
  
By the end of the night they've ruined the sheets with ink stains and pools of cooling come that they shout and jerk away from when their elbows land in them. Hikaru says he'll buy Pavel new sheets and Pavel doesn't ask him not to make promises, just sucks on Hikaru's fingers until Hikaru laughs and declares him delirious. Pavel has an ink smear on his cheek that Hikaru wishes he could have a picture of. It looks like a little black wing.   
  
"C'mere," Hikaru says, pulling Pavel into his arms. Pavel doesn't flinch against the pressure on his ribs, just deflates against Hikaru like he can choose to go boneless when he wants to. "You should let your hair grow out," Hikaru says, running his fingers through it.   
  
"Mmm. Maybe. Hikaru?"   
  
"Yeah?"   
  
"Will you really buy me new sheets?"   
  
"Yes. And how about some fucking plants, man? It's grim in here."   
  
"In your plan for the future, are there plants?"   
  
"There's a whole garden. Not just to look at, but with vegetables and stuff."   
  
"Hikaru, do you know how to cook?"   
  
"Of course not."   
  
"I do, a little. My mother taught me. I can cook for you if we ever have a garden."   
  
"I was counting on it."   
  
Pavel sits up on his elbows and sighs. He seems exhausted, but he's smiling, tracing over Hikaru's face with one finger. He outlines Hikaru's lips, and Hikaru sneaks his tongue out to lick Pavel's fingertip.   
  
"Are you really going to stay?" Pavel asks.   
  
"Yes."   
  
"I'm only talking about tonight."   
  
"Oh, in that case, no," Hikaru says with a snort, tickling his fingers up Pavel's side until he flinches and laughs.   
  
"I've been sleeping in your jacket," Pavel says.   
  
"I stole a pair of your underwear."   
  
"What! When?"   
  
"When I packed our things. They were clean," Hikaru says, blushing.   
  
Pavel laughs, sliding his arm across Hikaru's chest. He stops and moans a little.   
  
"Ouch," he says. "These _fucking_ ribs."   
  
Hikaru strokes Pavel's face sympathetically, wishing he would curse in English more often. It's adorable, and strangely arousing.   
  
"Want to know how we killed the guys who broke them?" Hikaru asks, running his fingers over Pavel's chest with a feather-light touch.   
  
"Ugh, no," Pavel says. "But thank you for offering."   
  
"You know, I -- thought you were dead." Hikaru doesn't clarify, allowing Pavel to assume he only thought so that night when they rescued him. He feels stupid now for all the fretting he did about Pavel as a ghost. He's real and warm in Hikaru's arms, real enough to need the imperfect comfort of Hikaru's body more than Hikaru would let himself realize before tonight.   
  
"I was dead," Pavel says, rolling over so that his cast is resting on his good leg again, his back against Hikaru's chest. "I came back to life when you lifted me out of that chest."   
  
"Hmm. That's a hard trick to swing."   
  
"And it hurt terribly." Pavel sounds serious. Hikaru feels the little ants begin to march across his skin as his sweat cools.   
  
"But I couldn't leave you alone." Pavel grips the pillow and yawns. Hikaru sighs and quits trying to figure out what's real and what isn't. He kisses the back of Pavel's neck and lets the last of the tension drain out of his limbs, deflating completely around Pavel.   
  
"I appreciate it," Hikaru says.   
  
"You're welcome," Pavel mumbles, already half-asleep. Hikaru follows him down into the warm dark of well-earned rest. When Pavel stirs with a nightmare, his sharp little whine waking Hikaru as Pavel twitches in his arms, Hikaru burrows in closer.   
  
"Shhh," he whispers, and Pavel whines again, more softly now, then relents and sinks back into sleep, his breath slowing. Hikaru knows this is the best they will ever do: reassuring each other every minute that the worst is behind them. They've seen enough of _Yomi_ that their hair will always be white. Hikaru doesn't care anymore, and he's not going to keep trying to suss out the parts of Pavel that belong to the ghost world. It's enough to be alive together in this world, with Pavel's equations, and orchids that speak to the insects that pollinate them with the shape of their petals. It's enough just to be in the company of someone who still thinks the world is beautiful. When Pavel says so it feels like a scientific fact, something that Hikaru can't dispute while Pavel is safe in his arms.


	9. Chapter 9

Hikaru meets Jim at a country club in Petaluma, holding the letter he was going to send him before he decided that he'd better tell him this in person. He's not planning on reading from the letter, but he grabbed it before leaving the house, mostly so that Pavel wouldn't find it. He'll give it to Jim, he decides, as a teenager in a busboy costume seats him in the mostly empty dining room. If Jim has the letter, he can give to Pavel by way of explanation if he needs to, though hopefully things will go smoothly and it won't come to that.  
  
"Captain Kirk called to inform us that he will be running a bit late," the teenager says as he drapes a napkin across Hikaru's lap with a fey little flourish.  
  
"That figures," Hikaru says. "Thanks."  
  
"My pleasure, sir."  
  
The kid bustles off and Hikaru tucks the letter into his pocket. He orders a glass of expensive scotch and a shrimp cocktail from the waiter; Jim can afford it. He's been drinking a lot lately, but he has a good excuse. He switches to beer after finishing the scotch, and Jim arrives soon after, throwing his arms out and grinning widely. He still looks pretty good for seventy-four, the bastard. Hikaru can see the cheer drain from his features as he walks closer, though he tries to hide it.  
  
"I know I look like shit," Hikaru says, standing to embrace him. "Every time I go in for a treatment all the nurses assume I've got AIDS."  
  
"They do not," Jim says, scoffing. He sits down and immediately eats from Hikaru's shrimp cocktail. Hikaru remembers reading somewhere that it was Jim's country manners as much as that out of wedlock pregnancy scandal that cost him the senatorial race back in '85, but Hikaru always thought Jim's obliviousness to the social graces was part of why people liked him.  
  
"What are you getting now, chemo?"  
  
"Nah, that's done."  
  
"Done?" Jim snorts, smiling like he's waiting for the punchline. "Okay, so . . .?"  
  
"So that's why I asked you here, actually."  
  
"Where's Pavel?"  
  
"At home. I told you he wouldn't be coming."  
  
Jim makes a surprised sort of face at the shrimp he's holding. "Geez, Hikaru, you're starting to freak me out."  
  
"I just need to talk to you about something. Can we order first?"  
  
Jim gets some kind of salad with crab and Hikaru has filet mignon and a baked potato. They overcook the steak, but Hikaru doesn't bother sending it back. He used to be a real pain in the ass about that kind of thing at restaurants, but lately he just feels like he doesn't have time for anything so petty. Of course, it's not so much a feeling as a fact.  
  
"Basically, the situation is this," Hikaru says. "I've got about two months."  
  
"Two months -- what? To live?"  
  
"Christ, Jim. Yes."  
  
"Says who?"  
  
"Who do you think? My doctors."  
  
"But -- well -- are they sure?"  
  
"No, of course not. But I don't know, they gave me six months two years ago and I didn't believe them. This time it feels different."  
  
"That doesn't mean they're right!"  
  
"Well, okay, but I have to operate as if they are. That's why I asked you here."  
  
"What is this about, your will?"  
  
"No, no, that's pretty cut and dry. I'm leaving the shop to my sister and Pavel gets everything else. That's all been squared away from the beginning. This is more important."  
  
"What is it?" Jim asks. He looks so wounded by this conversation that Hikaru feels like he should apologize for dying.  
  
"It's about Pavel," Hikaru says.  
  
"Oh, God, what? You haven't told him the two months thing?"  
  
"No, but don't worry about that, I will when I have to. It's about what happens after I die."  
  
"Don't say it like that," Jim says, wincing.  
  
"Goddammit, can you act like an adult?" Hikaru's heart balloons up the way it always does when he gets the chance to snap at Jim. Sometimes Jim feels like the closest thing Hikaru has to a son, though he's six years older.  
  
"Well, what do you want me to say?" Jim asks, his fork clattering against his plate. "You're my best friend. You can't just dump this on me like I'm supposed to be okay with it."  
  
"Hmm." Hikaru sits back, his suspicions confirmed, for better or worse. If Jim considers Hikaru his best friend, he must consider Pavel to be something else. They're certainly closer.  
  
"I don't need you to say anything," Hikaru says. "But I've got a plan that I'm hoping you can help me with."  
  
Jim sighs and kills his beer. "Yeah, what is it?"  
  
"I want you go come and help when I'm, you know, on my last leg." Hikaru pretends that all of this is very easy for him to talk about; ten years as an assistant funeral director and another thirty making flower arrangements for grieving families make it easier to hold everything unhelpful back.  
  
"Of course I'll come and help," Jim says, nodding. "God, Hikaru, anything you need."  
  
"I don't mean for you to help me, though that will be the pretense I suppose. I need you to help Pavel. And, I guess this is what I'm really asking you -- I need you to stay after I'm gone. Don't have a big discussion about it if you can help it. You can give him this if he tries to throw you out, though I doubt he will."  
  
Hikaru reaches into his pocket and pulls out the letter. His hand is shaking, which is annoying. Jim stares at him, pouting, then finally takes it.  
  
"Don't open it!" Hikaru says, slapping Jim's wrist. "All it says is what I'm asking you now. So? Will you?"  
  
Jim opens his mouth, and the beginning of a word tumbles out, a pained little _ah_. His mouth hangs open, and he shakes his head.  
  
"Of course I will," Jim says. He's cautious, cocking his head and frowning. "If -- that's what you really want."  
  
Hikaru grunts and drinks from his beer. Of course it's not what he wants, but he's already gotten what he asked for. Pavel was the one doing dangerous research with radiation until the sixties, and who chain smokes like a lunatic to this day. Hikaru was only on the fields in Hiroshima once or twice -- he can't remember the specifics now, it was so long ago -- and he gave up smoking in his forties. He was so afraid that Pavel would get cancer he started praying that he would get it instead, offering himself up in exchange, every night for the past twenty years or so. He got his wish, and it even started in his lungs, the place where he was most afraid it would get Pavel. He tried to explain to a nurse at the hospital who was worried about his probably Buddhist soul that he does believe in God, very much, and it's because of what's happened to him, not in spite of it. He was high on painkillers at the time and came off sounding like a senile old fool who needed to be committed, so he hasn't really tried to explain it to anyone else since. It's his own business anyway.  
  
"So you agree?" Hikaru asks, wanting this settled. "You'll stay with him and keep him company? And I don't mean for only a few months, Jim. He can't be alone after I'm gone, and you're the only thing that will console him."  
  
"You're so sure about that?" Jim asks. His face is red. Hikaru considers telling him that he's known for years, but he doesn't want to hurt him. Jim has been married four times and had countless affairs with women, probably plenty with men, too, but Hikaru is pretty sure that he's only ever been in love with Pavel. He suspected it for a long time before he knew for sure. Jim was always popping by the house in Kensington, and then in Larkspur after they moved out there. He would stay for a few days and then disappear, once for over a year, before suddenly reappearing, often very late at night, grinning on the front porch and offering some bottle of wine he'd gotten at a vineyard down the road. He and Hikaru have become great friends over the years, it's true, but Hikaru knew it was Pavel he was really coming back for. Hikaru knew for sure ten years ago, when Jim showed up two days before Christmas and dumped a pine tree on their porch. He stayed for a week, and when Hikaru woke on the couch one afternoon and stood to see Jim in the kitchen with Pavel, drying the dishes that Pavel handed him, Hikaru saw it on Jim's face. He thought, _That's how I must look at him_.  
  
As for Pavel's feelings for Jim, Hikaru has always hoped they're more brotherly in nature, but he wouldn't be surprised if Pavel has allowed himself to wonder from time to time if he fell in love with the right man. He and Hikaru have been happy together, but God knows they've had their trials. They almost split up in the fifties when Hikaru got arrested and served a week in county jail for assault after beating up a guy who called him a dumb chink in a restaurant parking lot. Hikaru had a problem with rage and paranoia for awhile; there was a time when he owned a lot of guns. Pavel would get fed up with it, and Hikaru would treat him as if he were ungrateful, as if Hikaru had become this way because of him, when in fact his problems were tempered by Pavel, who could send him to hell with one flash of disappointed sorrow on his face. Anyway, things got better. It's not as if being with Jim would have been a fucking cake walk.  
  
"Are you okay?" Jim barks, and Hikaru looks up from his plate.  
  
"This steak was overcooked," he mutters.  
  
"Oh, fuck, here, I'll get you another."  
  
"No, don't bother, I'm not hungry anymore."  
  
Jim sighs, and Hikaru stares at him, waiting for a definitive answer, some kind of pledge. He considered drawing up a contract, but was afraid that Pavel would find it and feel betrayed.  
  
"What would he think about you coming here and asking me to do this?" Jim asks, reading this concern off of Hikaru's face.  
  
"I hope he'd think that I love him and that I don't want him to be alone. Look, Pavel's the one getting the raw deal here. You think I wanted to outlive him? This is a big relief, in a way, for me. But it's not fair to him. He'll need, you know. Comfort."  
  
Jim shifts uncomfortably. The waiter returns, and Jim orders a scotch. Hikaru wants another, but he's already starting to feel sick, and he still has to drive back to Larkspur, which he really shouldn't be doing by himself.  
  
"How 'bout this?" Jim says when his scotch arrives. He picks it up and rubs at his eyes, for a moment looking every bit the old man he is. "How about you tough it out and don't die on us so soon?"  
  
"On us?" Hikaru snorts. It's unfair; when the three of them are together they really do feel like a family. It was the same during the few visits they got from Uhura and Spock and their children, and with Dr. Scott, who took them out for drinks whenever he visited Berkeley, until he died three years back. It might have been that way with McCoy, too, if he had ever come. He kept in touch with Jim through the service and wrote Hikaru and Pavel a long letter apologizing for never visiting a couple of weeks before he was killed in Vietnam. Hikaru saw his ghost once, when he was recovering after his first surgery. McCoy was leaning over the hospital bed, scoffing at the other doctors. He looked at Hikaru sadly, and that was when Hikaru knew that they hadn't gotten it all, that the cancer would kill him eventually.  
  
"I'm not saying I'm ready to die," Hikaru says. "Just that I want to be prepared. I'll feel better if I'm prepared."  
  
"Fine," Jim says. He throws back his scotch and winces. "Anyway, you know you didn't have to ask. I would have stayed if he needed me."  
  
"Of course he'll need you."  
  
Jim shrugs and looks down at his lap. Hikaru is ready to leave; he doesn't want to prolong this. He sighs and tries to think of an excuse. The older he gets the more trouble he has with lying, though he did manage to tell Pavel that he had a doctor's appointment this afternoon, not lunch with Jim. Pavel doesn't even know Jim is in town. Hikaru doesn't want them spending too much time together before he goes. He wants Pavel to himself for now.  
  
"Listen, I've got to go," Hikaru says, bracing his hand against the table in preparation to stand. "Are you sure you're okay with this? I'm sorry to just lay it on you, but I didn't know how else to say it."  
  
"That's okay," Jim says. He sighs deeply and shakes his head. "With you gone, it'll be just me and Pavel left."  
  
"There's still Spock and Uhura," Hikaru says, knowing immediately what he's talking about. Jim frowns.  
  
"What, you didn't hear?" he says. "I thought I told you guys?"  
  
"Huh? About what?"  
  
"Car accident in Italy. Sicily, I think they were on vacation."  
  
"Shit! Jim, fuck, you never -- their kids?"  
  
"Oh, no, the kids weren't with them. This was just last year, or maybe not even, like six months ago? Anyway, I wasn't invited to the funeral, I just heard about it."  
  
"Christ. You'd think their kids would have written to tell us."  
  
"Yeah, well, those kids were always a little weird, to me. 'Course, I only met them the once. Anyway, it's horrible, I know, but hey, they went out together, on vacation, rich as thieves, two highly respected psychoanalysts. Uhura still looked thirty, and hell, so did he. Pretty excellent death, really."  
  
"God, Jim."  
  
"Hey, Mr. Grim Reaper, now you don't want to talk about death? Okay, fine." Jim slaps the table and stands. He gives Hikaru a hand, and Hikaru takes it, resentfully, allowing Jim to help him up. He's exhausted.  
  
"I'll give you a ride home," Jim says, patting Hikaru's back.  
  
"No, no, I've got the car."  
  
They head for the doors, kids in uniforms pulling them open as if Hikaru and Jim are a royal couple entering a ballroom. The valet brings Jim's car first, a sparkling white Mercedes convertible.  
  
"I just got a CD player installed," Jim says, giving the car a loving, fatherly look. Hikaru snorts.  
  
"God, I barely asked you how you're doing," Hikaru says as he and Jim hug goodbye. "How are your kids?"  
  
"Still grown up and resentful. Asking for money! They take after their mothers that way." He winks. "I'm kidding. They're fine. Hey, say hi to Pavel for me, huh?"  
  
"I'm not going to tell him about this, Jim."  
  
"Oh, Jesus, it's like we're having an affair!" Jim shouts, grinning at he climbs into his car. Hikaru's face burns as he feels the eyes of the valet boys on him. He shakes his head and waves as Jim drives off. He feels lonely when he's gone, and gloomy, as if Jim is going to pull all the daylight along with him as he makes off down the road. It's always been this way; it fades, but when Jim first leaves, Hikaru and Pavel usually spend some time puttering about the house aimlessly and feeling like empty nesters. As Jim's car disappears into the golden curve of the hills, Hikaru thinks of that night on the boat at Hagi harbor, slipping in blood and carrying Pavel away like a corpse. It was another lifetime. When he thinks about it now, knowing that Jim was in love with Pavel, too, the whole thing feels like a movie he saw once.  
  
Hikaru drives back to Larkspur with his sunglasses on, feeling thirsty but otherwise okay. The day is lazy with hot, dry sun, like every day in the valley. He turns the radio on and thinks about Uhura and Spock driving along some beautiful coastline in Italy in a little red car, both of them stoic behind their sunglasses, content in the knowledge that they understood the motivations of everyone in the world like a massive mathematical equation. He can't decide who would have been driving. It had been impossible to tell who was on top in that relationship.  
  
He gets back to the house around three o'clock and is glad to see Pavel's car parked in the driveway. It's a one-story cottage with bright red cedar siding and an elaborate, now overgrown garden. The bougainvillea that has twisted around the trellis over the front walkway and the fence makes it all look orderly enough, Hikaru thinks. The garden is singing with insects and a few house finches, which take off in a dash from the birdbath by the porch. Lizards scamper out of Hikaru's way as he makes his way up the sun-baked brick walkway, and he feels guilty for disturbing the garden's residents. He starts to unlock the door and curses when he finds that Pavel has left it unlocked as usual. Sometimes Hikaru still has nightmares that faceless Russians are breaking into the house to steal him, though the Cold War has been over for a year now and Pavel made it through all of those years unharassed, except for some nonsense about Communism that was dispelled easily enough when he told the people who came to question him and the other professors at Berkeley that he was a Holocaust survivor who hadn't been back to Russia since he was twenty.  
  
"I wish you had let me drive you," Pavel says as soon as Hikaru is through the door. He's in an armchair in the front room, a newspaper open in his lap and his glasses pushed down to the very tip of his nose.  
  
"How can you read in here with no light?" Hikaru asks, turning on a lamp as he walks past.  
  
"Are you drunk?" Pavel asks. Hikaru snorts.  
  
"Don't be ridiculous. Why are you always asking me that?"  
  
"You shouldn't take those painkillers if you're going to drive. Doesn't it say so on the label?"  
  
Hikaru doesn't answer, just goes to the fridge and fishes out the orange juice. He drinks a big glass of it and turns to see Pavel standing in the kitchen doorway, frowning at him with suspicion.  
  
"What?" Hikaru asks, feeling guilty.  
  
"Have you had lunch?"  
  
"Yeah, I got McDonald's after the doctor."  
  
Pavel makes a scolding noise and goes for the fridge. He fishes out a yogurt in a rather sanctimonious fashion.  
  
"You want to kill yourself and break my heart, eating that stuff," Pavel says.  
  
"It was just a fish sandwich! I didn't get the fries."  
  
"Don't lie to me, Hikaru, I can smell your breath, it was a hamburger."  
  
"Like it's McDonald's that's going to kill me at this point," Hikaru grumbles. He feels guilty after he's said it and puts his arms around Pavel, who is standing at the sink, looking out the window at the backyard garden, which is even wilder than the front since Hikaru got sick. The birds like it, anyway; they're all over Pavel's feeders, mostly finches and sparrows.  
  
"I wish you'd take care of yourself," Pavel says, pouting.  
  
"Fine, me too. How many cigarettes have you had today? Half a pack?"  
  
Pavel _tsk_ s, leaning back against Hikaru as if conceding the point. "I'm too old to quit that," he says.  
  
"Okay, then I'm too old to quit McDonald's." Hikaru doesn't even really like that chain very much; he prefers the In and Out Burger, and he actually likes Pavel's cooking better than both, and that might be healthier but it made him chubby enough until the cancer stripped him bare. Pavel has always been thin, and old age has whittled him down some in the past five years.  
  
"What did the doctor say?" Pavel asks, digging at the last of his yogurt.  
  
"Oh, nothing special."  
  
"Are you going to have more chemo?"  
  
"I don't know, Pavel, can I at least sit down before we get into this?"  
  
Pavel doesn't respond, and Hikaru sighs, kissing his neck. He hates himself for being so relieved to know that he'll go first. He wouldn't have survived losing Pavel; he's never been as strong as he is. He sways his hips and hums "The Very Thought of You" to make it up to him, the song that was on the radio the night they finally moved into their first house together in 1958. Pavel had published a book and been promoted to assistant head of the Physics department at Berkeley, and the flower shop Hikaru opened with his youngest sister was finally starting to do more than just break even. It was the best night of Hikaru's life, drunk after dinner and dancing with Pavel by the fireplace in the living room. Pavel had kissed Hikaru's neck until he made him hard, laughing like a nervous innocent when Hikaru's erection bumped against his leg.  
  
"Don't try to butter me up," Pavel says, though he's letting himself be swayed. "I hate it when you won't tell me what the doctors say. This is why I want to go with you."  
  
"If I've got you with me they'll really think I've got the plague."  
  
"You're so proud about that! Just because you never slept with anyone else."  
  
"I'm proud that I got you early enough not to need to, that's all," Hikaru says, kissing Pavel's jaw. Pavel is properly melted now, his eyes closed and his cheek pressed against Hikaru's. The song works every time.  
  
"We should have gone back to Japan," Pavel says.  
  
"We still could." It's not true; Hikaru is in no shape to travel, and his heart couldn't have handled it even if he were in perfect health. It's the reason they never went, even after they had money to travel. Their memories would have been cheapened if they had been foolish enough to try to recreate any of it as old men. Pavel lets the subject drop, knowing this. Hikaru wonders if he should tell him about Uhura and Spock, and decides not to. What's it going to hurt if Pavel goes on thinking they're alive? They haven't seen them in ten years, anyway. It can wait until Jim blurts it out someday.  
  
It's a nice day, so they sit on the back porch with lemonade and Pavel reads while Hikaru dozes. He wakes from time to time and watches the birds, some of them dashing in frantically to take a sunflower seed and others leisurely munching them from the perches on the feeder. He's given some thought to being reincarnated as a bird, but he probably doesn't deserve it.  
  
"Look at this," Pavel says, grinning, and Hikaru blinks awake to glance at the newspaper. "The Russians win in swimming again."  
  
Hikaru doesn't give a damn about the Olympics, but he's been suffering them nightly with Pavel all summer. He knows Pavel likes to watch the swimming because it reminds him of his mother.  
  
"Maybe they'll actually let them compete as Russia next year," Pavel says with a scoff. He's very against the whole Unified Team concept and will discuss the phenomenon endlessly with his Russian colleagues at Berkeley, where he still lectures a couple of times a month as a special guest. He has a very odd sense of patriotism, ranting against Russia one moment and defending it ferociously the next.  
  
"We should have had a swimming pool," Hikaru says, feeling a little overly sun-baked. He drinks some more lemonade while Pavel frowns at the newspaper.  
  
"Too much maintenance," he says, randomly switching to Russian, which makes Hikaru laugh into his glass. Pavel's default is English and has been for a long time, but he'll lapse into Russian when certain topics come up, and he's always babbled in Russian during sex, which was quite enjoyable when Hikaru was just beginning to really learn the language and Pavel would forget that he could understand the embarrassingly worshipful things he said when Hikaru made him feel good.  
  
"We've got the hot tub, anyway," Pavel says, gesturing to it.  
  
"Do you ever miss the house in Kensington?" Hikaru asks.  
  
"Yes, sometimes. But I like it better here, outside of the city." He reaches over to touch Hikaru's arm. "Are you getting sentimental about that house?"  
  
"Maybe."  
  
"I still think about our first apartment."  
  
"God! That dump!"  
  
"Yes! Hikaru! I liked sleeping on a mattress on the floor. It reminded me of the futons."  
  
Hikaru grins over at Pavel and he smiles back, his cheeks pink. Pavel has gotten more and more prudish about sex as they've gotten older, as if they're talking about things other people did when they remember the futons.  
  
"Poor Mai, having to clean up after us," Hikaru says. "She's probably the first person who knew."  
  
"We tried to clean for her a little," Pavel says. He stares out at the garden, the newspaper hugged against his chest. "I wonder whatever happened to her."  
  
"Well, what happened to any of us?" Hikaru says, not sure what he means. Pavel laughs.  
  
"I never told you this, but Jim asked her to marry him."  
  
"I know," Hikaru says. He smirks. "Jim told me, too."  
  
"Oh. Well, I thought they would have made a nice couple."  
  
"What? Are you kidding?" Hikaru's heart is pounding; maybe he is drunk. "Jim's gay, Pavel."  
  
"What?" Pavel sits up straight, laughing. He makes a face, half amused and half disgusted, like Hikaru has told a dirty joke. "What are you talking about?"  
  
"Are you nuts?" Hikaru pushes out a laugh. "He is."  
  
"Based on what? He's always talking about women, and he's married them often enough."  
  
"Well, supposedly you can like both. And he's in love with you, that's certain."  
  
Everything inside Hikaru screams with regret; he shouldn't have said anything. He's ruined everything now, the sweet innocence that he imagined Pavel and Jim living in together after he's gone, the brotherly admiration of Pavel and Jim's aimless longing, which would have been enough to keep Pavel happy. Pavel just stares at Hikaru, scoffing.  
  
"You're crazy," he says. "You've always been jealous of him."  
  
"I have not! Anyway, whether I'm jealous or not, he loves you. Oh, never mind, don't listen to me."  
  
"I don't think I will," Pavel says, getting up from his chair. He goes into the house, leaving Hikaru slumped in his chair and staring out at the yard. Everything here in the valley is perpetually golden, especially their backyard with the wheat grass out of control and taking over the beds. Hikaru grew all kinds of vegetables here before he got sick: jalapeños and bell peppers, olives of course, and even pumpkins. He'd had fig trees, too, for years, prize winning fig jam. When Pavel made him give up his guns, plants became Hikaru's hobby. He did love his little flower shop in the city, and even came to appreciate funerals, because anything that required flowers to calm everyone down couldn't be all bad.  
  
When he goes inside Pavel is smoking a cigarette and pouring marinade on a trout, which makes Hikaru laugh. Pavel gives him an irritated look, and Hikaru makes himself scarce. He goes into the bedroom and turns on a baseball game, asleep on the bed within ten minutes, curled up on his side. Sometimes he wakes feeling like a boy again, indulging in these afternoon naps. It's a mercy of sickness, another thing that makes him believe there must be a God, or at least some sort of divine organization that polices itself.  
  
He wakes up as the sun is beginning to wane outside, and Pavel is curled around him. Hikaru's neck is wet with Pavel's tears, and Hikaru takes Pavel's hand, bringing it to his lips to kiss his knuckles. He wants to say it out loud, but he can't: _I'm sorry I'm dying. I'm sorry that I'm glad it's not you_.  
  
"Are you hungry?" Pavel asks, sniffling wetly.  
  
"Yeah," Hikaru says, though he never really is anymore.  
  
They eat outside on the patio, under the electric lanterns that are strung along the edge of the roof. Pavel is obnoxiously attentive, fluttering around Hikaru like a moth. Hikaru wants to make fun of him for cooking a trout; these days all he wants is take-away pizza. But he only smiles at Pavel across the table, chewing and swallowing, wondering if Pavel is still thinking about what he said about Jim. What an idiot Hikaru has become, really. Making all of these elaborate plans only to tear them down.  
  
"Your sister called while you were asleep," Pavel says.  
  
"Mmm? What'd she want?"  
  
"To know if we'll be at the beach for Labor Day."  
  
"Oh, God."  
  
"Well, I told her probably not. But, Hikaru, it might be fun."  
  
"Fun?"  
  
"Well, not fun, but -- worthwhile?"  
  
"I don't have time for _worthwhile_ anymore," Hikaru says with a laugh, shoveling rice pilaf into his mouth. Pavel is silent, and when Hikaru looks up from his plate, he's staring.  
  
"What?" Hikaru asks, still chewing.  
  
"The doctor told you something bad, didn't he?" Pavel asks. He has an uncanny ability to go from perfectly fine to completely wrecked in just a few seconds; his tendency to do so all but disappeared after his twenties but has resurfaced to full effect now that he's in his sixties. Hikaru always feels like it's all his fault, and in this case, of course, it actually is. Hikaru groans as if Pavel is being ridiculous and scoots his chair closer to Pavel's, putting an arm around his shoulders.  
  
"What do you want me to say, _otto_?" Hikaru asks, giving him a shake. Pavel scoffs and glares at him, wiping his eyes.  
  
"Don't call me your husband if you can't even be honest with me."  
  
"Honest? Okay, you want me to be honest? We stole forty-seven years together, from Death and the Communists and everybody else who tried to separate us. And you want to feel sorry for yourself? For me? Pavel, stop. Stop crying. Everything ends."  
  
"No," Pavel says. "Not this."  
  
"After everything, you're going to act this spoiled?"  
  
"Don't leave me," Pavel says, rubbing his wet face against Hikaru's neck.  
  
"Quit crying."  
  
"I can't."  
  
"Yes, you can. Come on." Hikaru wishes to God that he still had the strength to pick Pavel up and carry him to the couch. Pavel used to cry for no other reason than to be hoisted into the air by Hikaru and carried all the way up the stairs before he was dumped onto the bed. As if Hikaru knew what was best for him, how to fix him. Somehow, after they'd both decided that he did, it became true, and Pavel would whine and whimper and writhe beneath Hikaru until he was grinning again, his eyes so heavy with gratified lust that Hikaru would get dizzy looking into them.  
  
Now they just stagger up from their chairs to clear the plates, Pavel wiping his eyes and nose on his sleeve and Hikaru bleary from the wine that Pavel grudgingly let him drink with dinner. When the dishes are put away they gravitate to the couch, falling onto it with exhausted sighs. Pavel puts the Olympics on; they're showing a swimming competition, and he turns the volume up, poking Hikaru's arm with excitement.  
  
"Look, look, this is the young Japanese girl who is so good," Pavel says, pointing. "She's only fourteen."  
  
"How do you like that?" Hikaru says, muttering. Pavel is teary-eyed again when the girl wins the 200 meter breaststroke. About twenty years ago he shook Hikaru awake in the middle of the night to tell him that he'd had a dream that they had a daughter who looked just like Hikaru, with pigtails and braces, a girl with a pink bedroom right down the hall from theirs. Hikaru had stared at him like _So?_ and Pavel had burst into tears. Afterward Hikaru noticed Pavel looking at Hikaru's nieces wistfully, as if he wanted to take one of them home and raise her himself.  
  
They turn the television off and Hikaru wants to get into the hot tub, so Pavel humors him, turning on the bubbles and the underwater lights. Their property is relatively secluded, on what might have been a vineyard if they were interested in that sort of work. Pavel will be able to sell the place for a small fortune after Hikaru is gone, not that he has any use for a fortune at this point in his life. Hikaru doubts he would have known what to do with one even when he was younger. When they traveled in their fifties they always ended up bored, fucking and napping in their hotel rooms rather than sightseeing, drinking too much and having long bed-ridden conversations about the past. He smiles, thinking of it.  
  
"What?" Pavel asks, sidling up to him. "What's that grin?"  
  
"I guess I was thinking about when we went to Colorado."  
  
"Oh, yes." Pavel grins. "I wanted you to fuck me in the hot tub. That was the worst sex we ever had."  
  
"Truly."  
  
Pavel is weightless in the water, and Hikaru pulls him into his lap. For a moment there's a flash of what they had when they were younger, Pavel laughing and curling up against his chest. Forty-seven years later, Hikaru still can't believe that anyone ever had the stomach to hurt him, and it pings against the casket of his buried rage, just trying to imagine how it could have happened, how it could be real.  
  
"Look," Hikaru says, nodding up at the stars. Pavel rests his head on Hikaru's shoulder, following his gaze. "You know I'll be up there when I'm dead, looking down on you."  
  
"You will not," Pavel says. "Don't be sentimental."  
  
"I'm not. I'm going to be reincarnated as a space man."  
  
"An astronaut?"  
  
"Yeah, but not like the boring ones we've got now. I'm patient, I can wait until things get good. When we've got -- what do they call it? Warp speed?"  
  
"Hikaru."  
  
"Well, I'm just telling you so that you'll know to come, too. I'll be driving spaceships around up there, blowing up aliens. Don't you know I always wanted to be a pilot? God knows this country wouldn't have trusted me with a plane, but maybe in three hundred years or so they will."  
  
"Okay, Hikaru, sure, and will you have a collection of alien plants?"  
  
"Yeah, of course. And me and you, we'll have a little kid, a daughter, through some kind of space magic." He kisses Pavel's ear. "Why not? Anything'll be possible."  
  
"Mmm. Don't make fun of me."  
  
"I'm not making fun. It's gonna happen." Hikaru takes Pavel's face and tips it up toward his. "Just wait for me, okay? Wait 'til you know we can be together. And not just us, Jim, too, and the others. All of us in space, saving the world."  
  
"As opposed to saving just me," Pavel says, smiling shakily. He and Hikaru have relived that day so many times, from both sides, they've told each other every detail. Hikaru kisses Pavel, pinching his eyes shut tight enough to imagine that they're back in that hot spring in Japan.  
  
"It's not enough time," Pavel whispers against Hikaru's lips.  
  
"Exactly," Hikaru says. He wants to tell Pavel that this is his proof of God, that He wouldn't create something this good if it weren't meant to serve more than one lifetime. He knows Pavel won't hear it; atheism is a different sort of comfort for him. If he's honest, Hikaru isn't really sure which of them is right. He just knows what he wants, and it's enough to make a future life where he lives in space with Pavel and all their old friends seem possible. It's all he needs, really, the seeming possible.  
  
They get out of the tub and put the cover on, Hikaru stumbling eagerly into the bedroom and collapsing. Pavel, still mostly in the land of the living, brushes his teeth and washes his face before joining him. He rolls onto Hikaru's back, pressing his face between Hikaru's now-bony shoulder blades with a sigh. Hikaru thinks of what it will be like, the day that he dies. He doesn't think about how it will feel or what will happen to him afterward, just what Pavel will do in response. Will he shave his curls off? Stop eating, break his ribs with the force of his crying, curl against Jim with relief? Hikaru will be tempted to remain a ghost just to see what happens next, but if he does that he'll miss his chance to forget all of it and find Pavel again, some secret piece of him remembering. He thinks of them on a launch pad beside a spaceship, shaking hands and sizing each other up like they did on the tarmac before the plane left for Japan. He wonders if they already loved each other, long before now, but this has been so sharp and real that it can only be the beginning.  
  
He wakes up in the middle of the night, his throat bone dry and Pavel too heavy on his back. He slides out from under Pavel and feels his way to the bathroom, where he slurps water from the tap until his stomach aches. Avoiding his reflection in the mirror over the sink, he puts on a robe and walks out into his study, feeling panicked for a moment about the letters. He digs the notebook from Japan out from the bottom drawer of his desk and first flips carefully to the one that Pavel wrote for him on the first morning they woke up together.  
  
_Dear Hikaru,  
  
You are sleeping now and if I don't make myself look down at this paper I'll just lie there and watch you forever. I've thought of waking you but I'm afraid I would say a lot of foolish things if I did. Instead I'll just put them in this letter! Maybe I'll never even give it to you, unless you wake up and catch me writing it. I just feel like this must come out of me somehow and this is the safest way to do it. I'm so scared for you, Hikaru, I can't even breathe. I'm a cursed person, you see, and I know that if you care for me you'll be hurt. It's true that I'm a scientist and it sounds ridiculous for me to say such things, but though I don't believe in curses I think they do believe in me. When I was desperately unhappy I thought that God wanted me to be alone so that I could be unburdened and do great work, and when I let go of that God stuff I thought that it was just bad luck. Whatever it is, I don't want it to touch you, so much that I'm thinking about running away from this place and never telling anyone where I've gone. But as I've told you, I'm a coward, so of course I won't do that, I'll stay here with you and be afraid for you. And even that is a stupid lie, because I'm really afraid for myself. How will I live without you now? Yet I know that eventually I will have to. Even if we lived out our whole lives together as old men we would be parted someday by death. I've only spent one night with you and already I am anticipating this! So you see I am very foolish and rather hopeless, thank God you can't read Russian. I've done so many awful things, things I never wanted to do but which I think I could have stopped if I had been stronger or smarter, but then the alternative was only death, and so I'm glad for every awful thing I've done so that I could live to know you. When I was in Berlin I made myself believe that I was staying alive for some particular purpose which was then unknown to me, at the time I probably believed it to be the invention of a bomb that would obliterate the people who were hurting me, but now I think it was you I was always hoping for. I am really not as romantic as I sound in this letter, I promise. I hope you'll never read it! Or if you do that by then you'll love me so much that you won't mind. Oh, Hikaru, that you would love me that much. I'm a fool to hope for it but I can't help myself. Now you are waking up and asking me what I'm writing so I had better sign off here. How about I promise to teach you Russian so that you can read it? And of course I never will, so that you can't! And yet I wish you knew every word here by heart and wanted me anyway. Oh God I'd better stop now.  
  
I'll love you forever Hikaru Sulu,  
Yours,  
Pavel A. Chekov_  
  
Hikaru curses himself and wipes at his eyes with the sleeves of his robe. He turns to the back of the notebook, folding the letter again carefully between its pages. He flips past practice alphabets and vocabulary words, cartoons and drawings of stamens, notes on orchid reproduction. Finally, tucked between the binding and the back flap, there's the folded note that he hopes he'll have the presence of mind to leave for Pavel when he dies. It was actually written by Pavel, but Hikaru has added a comma that makes it his own.  
  
_Going back to my room. Keep having dreams about me sleeping and I will dream about you asleep as well. Goodnight, Hikaru_.  
  
He's read this old note probably five hundred times more than the one written in Russian, just because it took him so long to learn how to read the longer one. He never told Pavel that he kept either of them. He lost the one about getting cigarettes in the shuffle of that horrible day, but these two are an entire world for him, one that calls to mind the smell of lantern oil on his fingers and Pavel's hand tight around his thumb. He tucks them away in the drawer and gets up with a groan, tired again.  
  
In the bedroom, Pavel is flat on his stomach, snoring. He sleeps better these days, without waking. Hikaru drops the robe to the floor and slides into bed beside him, thinking of the morning when Pavel will wake and he won't. Should he have the note in his hand? Would it really comfort Pavel or would it only be morbid? What about Jim, is it morbid to try and leave him behind? But Jim would have stayed anyway. Hikaru only wants to pretend that it's his decision, that he's invited Jim to take his place.  
  
"Hikaru," Pavel mumbles, and Hikaru isn't sure if he's talking in his sleep or waking up a bit. Pavel reaches over and curls his hand around Hikaru's ear, and Hikaru laughs, waiting for Pavel to blink awake and smile at him, but his face is still and peaceful, and his grip slackens around Hikaru's ear.  
  
"Oh, God, I don't know what to tell you," Hikaru whispers. He breathes out a long sigh, waiting for Pavel to give some sign that he's awake, but there's nothing.  
  
He shuts his eyes and takes himself far away, to the stars. He takes Pavel with him, and Jim, Uhura, Spock, Dr. Scott, and McCoy, too. He lets his mind relax into fantasy, assigning them all roles on a giant spaceship. And they're not battling aliens, they're completing some peaceful mission, making real progress hundreds of years from now. He and Pavel are sent to an unexplored planet to catalog plant life. Pavel is a teenager, bright-cheeked, untouched. In this future even Hikaru is afraid to touch him.  
  
"God, I miss Earth," Hikaru says when they're sitting together on their break, eating bland replicated space food, their backs against an alien tree trunk. They've been in space for a long time, and there's nothing out here like their sun.  
  
"What do you miss most?" Pavel asks. He bumps his shoulder against Hikaru's and Hikaru leans away, blushing. The sky is purple and the plants are all blue-tinted, everything just a bit off.  
  
"I don't know," Hikaru says. "Rain? Sleeping in. Cheeseburgers, real ones."  
  
"Root beer?" Pavel says, smirking, and Hikaru laughs, though he's not sure why it's funny. He looks over his shoulder at Pavel, and when their eyes meet something passes between them that startles them both. Hikaru goes stiff and Pavel looks frightened for a moment, then he laughs again, nervously.  
  
"What?" he says.  
  
"Nothing." Hikaru turns away. It's getting harder and harder to be around Pavel -- Chekov. He's always thought of him as Chekov before now.  
  
"It's getting dark," Pavel says. "We should make a camp."  
  
They do, under the tree tops, an instamatic tent and then an old fashioned fire. When Hikaru emerges from the tent, where he's unrolled two sleeping bags, Pavel is sitting by the fire with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.  
  
"You're cold?" Hikaru asks, sitting beside him.  
  
"You are, too," Pavel says. He presses a finger against Hikaru's neck. "Goosebumps."  
  
"Little ants," Hikaru says.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Isn't that the root of the Russian term for them? For goosebumps?"  
  
"I -- yes -- do you speak Russian?" Pavel laughs doubtfully.  
  
"No." Hikaru shrugs. "I don't know, I just heard that somewhere."  
  
He gets up to poke at the fire and then sits down again, farther from Pavel, feeling uncomfortable. Pavel scoots closer, and grins when Hikaru turns to look at him.  
  
"Here," Pavel says, offering some of the blanket. "You're cold."  
  
"No, I'm not."  
  
"Hikaru."  
  
And there it is, like lightning down his spine: the scolding, intimate way the Ensign says his name, though Hikaru is pretty sure Pavel has never dared to be this familiar before. They stare at each other, the hair on the back of Hikaru's neck standing up.  
  
"What's wrong?" Pavel asks. He's so close that Hikaru can hear him swallow heavily.  
  
"Nothing -- just. Déjà vu or something."  
  
Pavel smiles warmly, and Hikaru shakes it off, laughing. He pulls the blanket around him, yanking Ensign Chekov against his side in the process. They've got another six or seven hours before they beam. Pavel sighs heavily and rests his shoulder firmly against Hikaru's as they watch the fire. Hikaru can feel him trembling.  
  
"Are you still cold?" Hikaru asks, embarrassed by the softness of his voice.  
  
"A little," Pavel says. He scoots closer, and Hikaru wraps an arm around his waist. Hikaru keeps catching himself thinking they've done this before, but on the ship they've always been formal, even nervous around each other. He presses his face to Pavel's curls, breathing in the achingly familiar smell of him.  
  
"We should get some sleep," Hikaru whispers, kissing the crown of Pavel's head. Strangely, he's in no hurry to undress him, though he's thought of it, guiltily, alone in his room at night. He assumes that everyone on the ship has once or twice, just because of the way Pavel looks. He didn't think it really meant anything.  
  
"Yes, sleep," Pavel says, his eyes already closed and his head resting against Hikaru's shoulder.  
  
"Someone's got to keep watch. I'll take the first shift. Here." Hikaru guides Pavel down gently until his head is in Hikaru's lap. Pavel sighs and settles in, wrapping an arm around Hikaru's knees. Hikaru strokes his hair, blushing hard and imagining what would be said about them if they were caught like this. Pavel is barely eighteen, and they're supposed to be professionals. They are professionals, but Hikaru can't help himself. Pavel keeps sighing and Hikaru keeps stroking his hair.  
  
"We could move into the tent if you want," Hikaru says, whispering.  
  
"No, this is fine."  
  
"It'll be warmer in there."  
  
"I --" Pavel looks up at him sheepishly. "I don't really like being in small, enclosed spaces like that. If I don't have to." He grins, and Hikaru nods, pretending not to understand that Pavel is actually just afraid that Hikaru will try something with him if they're closed up together in the tent. He pets Pavel's hair reassuringly, then sneaks his fingers down the back of Pavel's neck. Pavel whimpers a little, shifting to feel more of Hikaru's touch, and it yanks at Hikaru's gut. It's more than lust, though it has come over him suddenly, like a fever. But maybe not so suddenly; it's not like he's never beat off to the thought of Pavel, imagining how unbelievably tight he must be, how sweetly he would moan when he was stretched. He shudders, feeling guilty, and is relieved when Pavel drops off into sleep.  
  
Hikaru's back starts to ache, and he lies down on the ground, pulling Pavel with him. Pavel adjusts easily, snaking his leg across Hikaru's hips as if they've done this a million times before. He's still asleep, his nose whistling and his mouth halfway open, wet on Hikaru's neck. Hikaru stares up at the stars, looking for the _Enterprise_ , but she's not in view, orbiting around the other side of this small planet. Maybe some part of him knew that this would happen as soon as he and Pavel were assigned to a mission together. But what is happening, anyway? They're not exactly tearing each other's clothes off in a fit of passion. Hikaru isn't sure why, but he doesn't feel as if there's any need to hurry. He puts his hand over Pavel's, which is resting on his chest. Something about the feel of Pavel's skin under his calms him down like nothing ever has.  
  
He falls asleep; it was stupid to lie down and get comfortable, the blanket draped over both of them. He dreams about Japan, a country he's never visited, and about war, something he's experienced only briefly, during his first mission as the _Enterprise_ 's pilot. He dreams that Captain Kirk buys him a Christmas tree, and that Spock shows up on the bridge wearing glasses with heavy black frames. He worries in his sleep, about things that don't mean anything to him: an unbalanced register in a florist's shop, a locked desk drawer that he can't pull open no matter how hard he yanks on it, and an empty room with a dusty windowsill that for some reason makes him cry as he runs his fingers over it, looking for something.  
  
"Here," Pavel says in the dream, coming up behind Hikaru. He's got a cut on his lip and a black eye, and he dumps a handful of paper cranes into Hikaru's hands before Hikaru can ask him who hit him.  
  
"Here they are," Pavel says, folding Hikaru's fingers around the cranes. He's speaking condescendingly, as if he feels sorry for Hikaru, who realizes with a jerk of his shoulders that this isn't Pavel at all, it's someone else.  
  
He wakes up with a startled gasp and sees Pavel leaning beside him, propped up on his elbow. The sun is coming up, and Pavel's eyes are puffy and lidded.  
  
"You fell asleep," Pavel says. He grins.  
  
"Yeah." Hikaru rubs his eyes. "Sorry." He can't shake the feeling that he was supposed to remember to do something, to go somewhere, like he left something unfinished.  
  
"I had a dream about you," Pavel says.  
  
"You did? What'd I do?"  
  
"Here, I'll show you," Pavel says. His cheeks are red as he leans over to kiss Hikaru very softly on the lips. Hikaru pulls him down for a real kiss, rolling both of them onto their sides. Pavel is the only non-replicated thing Hikaru has tasted since they left Earth almost a year ago, and it's so good, he never wants to stop. When Pavel pulls back to breathe they both laugh, nervous again, their faces hot.  
  
"Sorry," Hikaru says, because he's flipped Pavel onto his back and has kind of inadvertently mounted him, and because he can't seem to make himself dismount. Pavel laughs, not so nervously now, his eyes bright enough to make Hikaru think of the real sun, back home.  
  
"Don't be sorry," Pavel says, reaching up to hold Hikaru's face. "Come here." He pulls him down and they kiss again, languidly now, and when Pavel squeezes Hikaru's ass and arches up against him as if to beg for more Hikaru could swear that this right here is the whole reason he came to space.  
  
"We should get up," Hikaru says, embarrassed not because he's hard -- Pavel is, too, he can feel it -- but by _how_ hard he is, his cock so heavy that he wonders if he'll be able to stand up.  
  
"I mean," Hikaru says, stuttering. "We've got work to do."  
  
"Yeah," Pavel says, and he opens his mouth for Hikaru's tongue when Hikaru kisses him again, still out of breath. Hikaru feels as if he's been lumbering through life all this time like a toy without batteries. He didn't know he could do this, feel like this, like someone has finally plugged him in, turned him on, flipped the switch, whatever. He's kissed people before, of course, and he fucked a guy at the Academy, two years younger than him and cute, and it was good, but it wasn't like this.  
  
When they beam back to the _Enterprise_ they walk stiffly from the platform, and Hikaru does the talking, giving Jim his report while Pavel stands behind him. Hikaru is flustered, trying not to think about the come that is surely running down Pavel's legs. They barely got their flies zipped when the transmission to beam came.  
  
"Good work, you two," Jim says, giving Hikaru a weirdly smug look, as if he knows what's going on here. Hikaru thanks him and heads for his room, telling himself that Jim always has that look on his face. He looks over his shoulder at Pavel, who is following.  
  
"Please," Pavel whispers. "I don't have a shower in my room, and, I --"  
  
His face is so red that Hikaru wants to hide him. He quickly ushers Pavel into his room, where Pavel lets out a tremendous breath, as if he'd been holding it since they beamed. Hikaru comes up behind him and pulls his shirt off over his head.  
  
"Hikaru," Pavel says. He's grinning and staring straight ahead while Hikaru kisses him, as if he just remembered something funny that Hikaru will appreciate.  
  
"What?" Hikaru asks, though he doesn't really expect an answer. He yanks Pavel's belt off and helps him push down his pants. When they're both completely undressed Hikaru picks Pavel up with an _oof_ ; and he's actually kind of heavy, surprisingly.  
  
"What are you doing?" Pavel asks, laughing, his arms around Hikaru's neck.  
  
"Bringing you to the shower."  
  
"Is my leg broken or something?"  
  
"No, you just looked like you needed carrying."  
  
"Should I be offended by that?" Pavel asks as Hikaru sets him down in the shower and steps in with him, closing the frosted glass door behind them.  
  
"No," Hikaru says, turning on the water. "It's more to do with me than you, really. Don't be offended if I pick you up in the mess and carry you across the room, or on the bridge, maybe I'll start carrying you from the lift and dumping you in your seat."  
  
"You wouldn't," Pavel says, laughing.  
  
"I'll do it and you'll love it." Hikaru sort of tackles Pavel then, pressing him against the shower wall and tickling his hands up his sides until Pavel is laughing hysterically and begging him to stop. The rest of the day is kind of out of control. They clean each other up and suck each other off in the shower, then Hikaru fucks Pavel over the side of the bed, then under the blankets, and later, after a nap, on his desk chair, Pavel bouncing in Hikaru's lap and gasping up at the ceiling, Hikaru so mesmerized by the pale sheen of Pavel's neck that he can only stare, his wet mouth hanging open, until suddenly he's coming hard, grabbing Pavel and holding on for dear life.  
  
"Well, fuck," Hikaru says when they're back in bed together, Hikaru slumped over in exhaustion and Pavel perfectly energetic, lying on his stomach and propped up on his elbows while he eats strips of replicated red licorice.  
  
"Now what?" Hikaru says, still out of breath. Pavel puts a half-eaten piece of licorice against Hikaru's lips and pushes until he takes a bite.  
  
"I don't know," Pavel says. "We could watch a movie."  
  
Hikaru laughs, his chest aching; he feels like he's got a cold, like he fucked himself sick. "That's not what I meant," he says, though he's not sure what he wanted to do, plan for the future? They're on this ship together for the next four years. If it's always going to be this easy, maybe they don't even need to talk about it. But some primal, possessive thing at the pit of him needs to know right now that this is never going to go away.  
  
"We could sleep, if you'd rather sleep," Pavel says. He lies down and turns onto his side, still chewing licorice and studying Hikaru like he's one of the alien plants they collected, trying to figure him out.  
  
"Are you, like, for real?" Hikaru asks. Pavel smiles.  
  
"Only if you are," he says.  
  
They turn on a movie, some space opera import with lots of explosions. Hikaru falls asleep on Pavel's shoulder within five minutes, curled around him. He hunts through his subconscious for threads of the dreams he was having earlier, but there's nothing on his mind now but Pavel's skin, and the rise and fall of his breath against Hikaru's chest. He dreams that he's floating on a raft in a peaceful ocean, riding the soft slope of the waves, staring up at a cloudless sky, not worried about where he's going.


End file.
